Congressional correspondent for the Washington Examiner Susan Ferrechio has taken to Twitter to apparently mock one of the main articles published in New York Magazine on 9 January – an op-ed by Olivia Nuzzi about Trump's presidency. Nuzzi, NYM's Washington correspondent, concluded her article by stating that her "lasting image" of POTUS was of "a guy sh*tposting his way through a single term in office, one finger on the nuclear button, the others glued to his phone".
Ferrechio, however, wondered where Nuzzi's feeling that Trump was threatening to start a nuclear war came from. The Washington Examiner correspondent said that she had never heard of such a threat being made by POTUS and suggested that if there was no such threat, Nuzzi's op-ed could only be seen as a piece of "garbage journalism". The correspondent stressed that such pieces only worsen the situation in the country, which has been divided by political disagreements and scandals.
Wait was he threatening to use nukes??? Whoa. I don't remember that story! If true, it is absolutely astonishing. If not, it's the kind of garbage journalism that Makes Things Worse. https://t.co/YbNLZMaNIj
— Susan Ferrechio (@susanferrechio) January 10, 2021
The Washington Examiner journalist went on to wonder how the mainstream media will describe the presidency of Trump's successor, Joe Biden. She specifically asked whether the media would dare to mock his tendency to make gaffes during public speeches, just as they did with Trump's apparent addiction to communicating with the US and the rest of the world via his Twitter account.
I'm looking forward to the media coverage of the Biden years" "In one hand, President Biden's fingers clutched his bottle of Aricept, in the other, the nuclear codes."
— Susan Ferrechio (@susanferrechio) January 10, 2021
The latter, however, was recently taken away from POTUS after Twitter and several other popular platforms permanently banned the president from their services. The ban, which Trump described as an attempt by Big Tech to "silence" him, came under the pretext of Trump purportedly inciting and glorifying violence via his Twitter account.
The US president did use his Twitter account to invite supporters to attend a 6 January protest against the Congress certifying the results of the election, which Trump claims was "stolen" from him. However, POTUS never directly urged protesters to storm the Capitol, let alone attack its defenders – the Capitol Police. Moreover, Trump addressed his supporters and warned them against resorting to violence and violating the law using the same Twitter account.
He strongly condemned those who stormed the Congress building, while also calling his supporters "patriots". Still, Twitter, like many other platforms, accused the president of glorifying the violence and banned him. Since then, the Democrats have been seeking ways to remove Trump from office ahead of the end of his term on 20 January, or at least to prevent him from starting a war. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi namely met with the top US military brass to convince them to strip the president of access to the nuclear launch codes, calling Trump "unhinged". There has been no indication that the military agreed to help Pelosi.
