About last night

I checked Twitter last night to see what Donald Trump had to say about Doug Jones’s defeat of Roy Moore:

Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2017

I’d feel confident wagering that Trump did not write this tweet, for two reasons:

~ The restrained tone. A true Trump tweet would focus on the Fake News and what it did to poor Roy Moore. A true Trump tweet would not focus on a opponent’s win, much less ennoble that win as “a hard fought victory,” much less delight in the ongoing ups and downs of politics (“It never ends!”). This tweet expresses the sentiment of a good sport, someone willing to congratulate an opponent and celebrate the electorate who voted for that opponent. But Donald Trump is not a good sport, and I doubt that he can even pretend to be one. I can find no comparable Trump tweet of congratulation to Ralph Northam when he defeated Ed Gillespie last month in the Virginia gubernatorial race.

~ The utter absence of eccentric capitalization, punctuation, spacing, or spelling. I’m especially focused on the startling hyphen in write-in. Where did that come from? I don’t think that iOS dictation accounts for it: my phone, again and again, comes up with “right in votes.”

Last night’s tweet does contain two bits of standard Trump phrasing, which anyone familiar with his diction will recognize: “very big factor” and “a very short period of time.” But then anyone attempting to channel Trump’s voice — Dan Scavino? — could make use of such phrasing.

I have to add that I love the attempt at analysis and explanation: “the write-in votes played a very big factor.” That’s like saying that the votes of people who refused to vote for a candidate contributed to that candidate’s loss. Yep, a tough break. If I weren’t for the people who voted against you, you would have won! The feeble logic makes me suspect Kellyanne Conway as the writer.

This morning’s tweets suggest that the president himself is back on the Twitter, claiming that he knew Moore could never win “the General Election” and complaining about a stacked deck, “Fake News Media,” “Mainstream Meadia,” and the need for “GREAT” candidates. And the problem of “razor thin margins in both the House and Senate” — notice, no hyphen.

In my imaginary White House this morning: a cracked television screen, and a dented six-pack of Diet Coke on the floor.

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Donald Trump’s spelling
Who’s tweeting?

[Meadia: not my mistake.]