US election: Trump tweet about ‘winners and losers’ returns to haunt him

Donald Trump is notorious for his explosive rants on Twitter and particularly for old tweets written prior to his tenure in the White House returning to haunt him.

“There’s always a tweet” has become a common refrain on social media whenever one of the president’s past pronouncements is rediscovered and undermines or contradicts his actions in office.

His criticisms of his predecessor Barack Obama’s handling of the Ebola crisis in 2014, for instance, look especially hypocritical in hindsight given his own failures in tackling the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far hit 9.7 million Americans, including himself, and claimed over 235,000 lives.

But Mr Trump’s furious reaction to this week’s still-emerging election result has produced one of the finest examples yet.

“What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate,” Mr Trump tweeted on 30 December 2014 when still just an armchair pundit best known for hosting the NBC reality show The Apprentice and sounding off with dating advice for the actor Robert Pattinson.

While that seemingly innocuous statement could have been lifted from a book of famous aphorisms, it casts his conduct since Tuesday night in a deeply unflattering light.

“This is a fraud on the American public, this is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election - frankly, we did win this election," he said in the East Room of the White House in the early hours of Wednesday morning, speaking as votes were still being tabulated and providing no evidence for his claims.

He has since lashed out on Twitter, many of his posts having to be censored by the site for carrying misleading information, demanded recounts in disputed states narrowly called for Joe Biden like Wisconsin and dispatched his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to Pennsylvania to protest the ongoing count on spurious grounds.

On Thursday evening, he gave a 17-minute press conference - taking no questions - and complained: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win.”

“Are you being a sore loser?” asked CNN correspondent Jim Acosta as the president left the briefing room, his question ignored by the departing Mr Trump.

The president has certainly not taken this particular “twist of fate” too kindly and will not enjoy being branded a loser, frequently reserving the phrase “stone cold loser” for those who criticise him, most memorably London mayor Sadiq Khan ahead of an official visit to Britain last summer.