Trump marks Christmas Day with furious rant claiming the US is ‘dying from within’

Donald Trump decided against spreading joy and cheer and opted instead to declare that the United States was “dying from within” as he wished Americans holiday greetings on Sunday, lashing out in a series of posts on his Truth Social platform.

The former president, who was described in a recent New York Magazineprofile as connected to only a tiny inner circle of aides and advisers as he pursues a third bid for the White House, remains largely holed up at Mar-a-Lago and his other Florida properties as he faces a bevy of criminal and civil investigations.

Those ever-present issues were mirrored in Mr Trump’s mood on Sunday morning as he noted the withering cold much of the country is experiencing this Christmas and blamed his political foes for destroying American society and, in particular, for not doing more to tamp down on illegal migration at the southern border.

“On this very cold but beautiful Christmas Day, look at our Nation NOW on the Southern Border compared to only a short time ago during the Trump Administration,” wrote Mr Trump.

“We had the most SECURE Border in our history, versus the “horror show” that that [sic] is happening now, with record-setting numbers of people, many of them hardened Criminals (including Killers, Human Traffickers and Drug Dealers), POURING INTO OUR COUNTRY at a rate the likes of which we have never seen before. The USA is dying from within!!!” he declared.

But the former president wasn’t done there. He went on to post a second angry screed minutes later, which concluded: “TODAY, LIKE NEVER BEFORE, WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!”

He later resumed his angry screeds with a series of Christmas afternoon missives, including one accusing Democrats of having “weaponised the criminal justice system at a level never before seen,” adding that those efforts include “no borders and crooked elections” and claiming the US is in “third world trouble”.

He separately condemned the Electoral Count Act reform language included in the Fiscal Year 2023 appropriations bill which is now headed to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.

Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed that the legislative push to clarify the 1887 law governing how Congress counts electoral votes shows he was correcting believing his former vice president, Mike Pence, had the power to unilaterally reject votes from swing states won by Mr Biden in 2020.

No reputable expert on US law of the US constitution has endorsed Mr Trump’s claims, but he has nonetheless persisted in suggesting Mr Pence could have declared himself and Mr Trump the winners of the 2020 election against the wishes of American voters.

He claimed on Sunday that Mr Pence “did indeed have the power to send Electoral Votes back to State Legislatures for reapproval despite the constant drum from Democrats and RINOS that he ‘ABSOLUTELY DID NOT’” and noted that the omnibus appropriations bill (which he misspelled as the “ominous” bill) has “clarifying language”.

“So why the new language? Because it was just another political Con Job!” he added.

Mr Trump famously ran for president in 2016 on a promise to build a physical barrier along the US-Mexico border to control illegal migration. That barrier was never completed, though the Biden administration continued some construction and repair efforts after taking over in 2021.

His rant was a sign of what many Trumpworld correspondents have reported through firsthand interviews with the president and his allies as well as analysis of his public events, which have at least temporarily ceased following the conclusion of the 2022 midterms: that the former president is now focused on little more than getting revenge against Joe Biden and the others he sees as responsible for his political defeat in 2020.

The ex-president now stands on shakier electoral ground than ever before. His rivals in the GOP smelled blood in the water after his chosen acolytes Kari Lake, Doug Mastriano, Herschel Walker and others fell flat in this year’s midterm contests, leading to Democrats retaining control of the Senate and nearly heading off GOP control of the House.

And he remains beset by criminal investigations of his campaign’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, not to mention the ongoing Justice Department grand jury probe into January 6 and the effort to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power to Mr Biden.

His company, the Trump Organization, was also recently convicted of a scheme to shield executive pay from tax authorities.