Twitter is a pit of misery that many of us would gladly set on fire if it weren’t useful for keeping in touch with friends, following breaking news, or occasionally operating the social media accounts for our pop culture writing jobs, but most people are lucky enough to avoid having to suffer through a true Twitter nightmare. Every once in a while, though, an otherwise innocent person will inadvertently strike a nerve and draw the ire of some angry group that is more than happy to ruin someone’s day, their week, or maybe even their entire Twitter experience. Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel seems to have experienced that kind of Twitter nightmare this weekend, having posted an inaccurate tweet about the crowd size of Donald Trump’s recent Florida rally that caught the eye of Trump himself.
As you might expect, Trump didn’t take it well. Though Weigel’s tweet was only up for 20 minutes before he discovered it was wrong and deleted it, Trump still took the time to gather photos of the event, screencap Weigel’s tweet, and fart out a little tirade about how Washington Post is “FAKE NEWS” and how Weigel should apologize.
Weigel did apologize, noting that it was “fair” to call him out for the mistake, but he also added that it was on his personal account and therefore doesn’t reflect any kind of official report from the Washington Post.
So yeah, Weigel made a mistake, but Donald Trump is still a pathetic little worm who is an embarrassment to the United States. The government literally just managed to avoid a total shutdown on Thursday, but Trump has time to yell at a private citizen on Twitter? Really, the most depressing thing about all of this is that none of it is surprising.