President Donald Trump spent the early hours of Monday throwing a tantrum instead of sleeping.
The 80-year-old launched into a familiar late-night Truth Social tirade at around 10 p.m., with porous claims about gas prices under his predecessor.
“Gas prices were much higher under Biden than under ‘TRUMP.’ So were almost all other prices,” he said, putting his name in quotation marks for some reason.
This claim is technically grounded in some of the numbers, but it includes some classically Trumpy spin. For one, prices have not actually fallen under Trump.
Consumer prices were still 3.4 percent higher in August than a year earlier, while gasoline prices have surged again in 2026. The comparison also conveniently starts with the inflation-heavy years of the Biden presidency triggered by massive COVID-19 relief spending, allowing Trump to portray the slower pace of price increases under his watch as a broad decline in prices.
Americans are still paying more for many of the same goods and services, largely due to Trump’s war against Iran.
A few hours after this dubious claim, Trump fired off a blitz of five posts in just nine minutes.
The first was a link to a news article about former CIA Director John Brennan. The president has long claimed he is the victim of a “grand conspiracy” involving Democrats and “deep-state” operatives, despite a lack of evidence.
As part of its wide-ranging probe, the DOJ has subpoenaed intelligence officials who concluded in January 2017 that Russia sought to influence the election in Trump’s favor and opened a criminal investigation into Brennan.
The link Trump shared said that “prosecutors have zeroed in on John Brennan’s role in Trump-Russia collusion narrative in conspiracy case.”
That was posted just before 1 a.m. Moments later, Trump moved on to the Kennedy Center, sharing a link to a news article that claimed: “Biden-era inspection reports expose Kennedy Center disrepair, safety hazards that Trump seeks to fix.”
He took a 10-minute break and returned with a post about how he has banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House.
At 1:06, he drove home this message for the visual learners, posting an AI slop image of these publications’ names emblazoned across trash bags dumped outside the White House.
He abruptly announced the ban on Truth Social on Friday afternoon. Journalists from the outlets finished their workday, but when they returned Saturday morning, they were barred from entering the building.
Trump was grilled about the decision at the Oval Office later that day. He said that there was “something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” and said, “Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine, but I don’t have to let them into my—in the People’s House.”
As part of his Truth Social spree early on Monday, Trump actually said that Breitbart was the only publication that covered him “fairly.” He reposted a message from the title that said as much. The photo showed Trump holding up a physical clipping of one of their favorable stories.
Natalie Harp, the special assistant and executive assistant to the president, reportedly screens what coverage reaches Trump by printing off favorable stories and bringing them to him. This earned her the nickname “Human Printer.”
In fact, the 35-year-old, who earns $150,000 a year in her role, urged Trump to ban dissenting reporters from the White House, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
Harp played Trump clips of anchors on MS NOW “criticizing his administration” before he announced the ban on Truth Social, the Journal reported.
Trump has moaned to aides that he “doesn’t have enough” political allies defending him on television or praising his second-term achievements, sources told the title.
In the stunning post, Trump did not cite a particular story that had irked him, but claimed the trio of outlets had reported “FICTION and LIES” and warned there were “Other Fake News Media Outlets” to follow.
