Back the truck up, Donald Trump

We’re all old enough to remember when, in March 2017, Donald Trump sat like a kid in a candy shop, fancying himself as a truck driver while honking the horn sitting in the driver’s seat of an 18-wheeler parked by the South Portico. Trump was meeting that day with drivers and executives from the American Trucking Associations as part of a failed Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. “No one knows America like truckers know America!” Trump exclaimed.

This weekend, Trump again professed his admiration for the trucking industry. However, he rushed to do so, allowing a social media post to convince him that America’s truckers were lining up to protest the outcome of his recent fraud case by punishing New York for it. “Such an honor to have so many Great Patriots on the side of FREEDOM!” Trump posted on Truth Social in response to a video rant from “Chicago Ray,” a trucker warning that many truckers are “going to start denying loads to go to New York City” beginning Monday.

Apparently, once Chicago Ray realized that his viral video, amplified by Trump and right-wing media outlets, appeared to promise widespread economic pain this week, he deleted it, then wrote again to explain that “I’m just a Trucker who heard chatter and posted it.” He then admitted “there’s good people in NYC” and “I’ve got family there” and “there’s a lot of people who have nothing to do with this that could be harmed.”

While Chicago Ray’s second post sounded contrite and more sensible, he deleted that, too, having angered some of his followers for backing down out of fear of losing his job, according to a chronology by Meidastouch.com. In a third and final post, Chicago Ray insisted, “No one’s got to me,” then feebly suggested, “Drivers can make their own decisions based on their families and their careers.”

Well, here we are, far into the week, and there has been no truckers’ strike disrupting New York, despite what Trump and others may have wanted everyone to believe. What’s not fiction, however, is the stubborn fact that Trump was ordered to pay $355 million in penalties for civil fraud and be barred from serving as an officer or director for any business in New York State over the next three years. This is Trump’s reality.