President Donald Trump's pre-dawn Truth Social tirade on Thursday triggered a fresh alarm among observers who say the 80-year-old is clearly panicking about his future.
Trump fired off the first of several Thursday posts at 5:50 a.m. ET, lashing out at the "evil and corrupt" Democratic Party as the incoming congressional majority prepares to launch a slate of investigations into his administration.
"The Democrat Party, lead by one of the most Corrupt and anti-American groups of political leaders and hacks in the history of our Country, and even the World, is doing everything in their power to get away from MASSIVE BLUE STATE CORRUPTION by saying, over and over again, that the Trump Administration is corrupt," Trump wrote.
He went on to insist he does not take a salary and signed off with a warning: "In any event, THE DEMOCRATS ARE CORRUPT AND EVIL, and I am the exact opposite! Fight hard, Republicans, or you won't have a Country left!"
Mediaitecharacterized the outburst as a screed aimed at distracting from what Trump claims is blue-state election fraud. The president has offered no evidence for the charge.
The post landed a little over a week after Democrats swept the Nov. 4 midterms, winning both chambers of Congress for the first time in Trump's second term. NBC News projected the result as a forceful repudiation of Trump's agenda.
Senior Democrats have signaled that the Trump family's business dealings, the administration's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the Iran war will all be on the agenda when they take the gavels in January. NPR reported that lawmakers also plan to scrutinize the president's ongoing business interests, including Truth Social itself and a web of cryptocurrency ventures.
Trump has already moved to preempt the oversight push. Al Jazeera reported that on Nov. 8, he ordered the Justice Department to open a probe into Democratic lawmakers for what he called a "criminal act" of threatening officials with impeachment.
Political analyst David Rothkopf told The Daily Beast Podcast on the eve of the election that Trump's loss of congressional cover would be destabilizing. "This is the beginning of absolutely lame duck Donald Trump," Rothkopf said, warning that the next two years could resemble "a nuclear meltdown: the Chernobyl inside Donald Trump's head."