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This Old Trump Tweet Will Make You Laugh And Cry

by Lani Seelinger

Remember when Donald Trump used to just be that weird rich guy who thought Obama wasn't born in America? Yeah, me too. But that wasn't just a dream, and if you scroll back far enough on the president-elect's Twitter feed, you'll find his political musings on things besides himself running for president. In particular, one old Trump tweet will make you laugh and cry all at once. It's a tweet where Trump, a man who just won the electoral vote but lost the popular vote after making claims about how the election would be rigged for months, argued that "the electoral college is a disaster for democracy."

So what now, future Mr. President? Will you hold some sort of investigation? Will you hold recounts to make sure that the voting machines were working correctly? Will you use your new power in January to do something about this particular disaster for democracy, which now left a majority of Americans with a president they didn't want for four years? Of course not — expecting that is just as absurd as expecting that Mexico will pay for the wall. This is nothing more than yet another instance of Trump changing his mind when it is convenient for him to do so. Just — the irony here. It's too much.

This offers little in the way of consolation, but at least there isn't a spurned former Republican presidential nominee out threatening the peaceful transition of power that is such a hallmark of a working democracy. At least the widespread protests against Trump have been peaceful. And at least the candidates have treated each other with grace ever since the results came in. The country has now witnessed politics without grace — and now it's clear that politeness does play a valuable role.

That old tweet from Trump in a different life is so ironically funny, and it stings so much. But then again, any sort of Trump victory would have stung for those who voted against him — not just one where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Does he even remember having felt this way? Will he ever recognize that he won based on a system that he once deemed a disaster? This is the same guy who said that he would only accept the results of the election if he won, so the correct answer to that is a hard no. But it does give us hope in one regard — maybe he'll forget some of his other promises and positions from his campaign.