From Richard II:

O! but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

They try to disrespect a hero yet.

McCain wants an honorable funeral, with Presidents Bush and Obama there to keynote.

Yet, gee, he did not invite ferret Trump, whether or not he has any grief.

Because Twitter didn’t become well-known until its overhaul in 2006, many people don’t realize that the popular social media platform is actually over a thousand years old.

I was combing through the archives the other day when I found the old Twitter feed of the historical Macbeth. A fascinating primary source document, the daily musings of the king paint a picture of a one-of-a-kind leader, the likes of which we may never see again.

In honor of Shakespeare’s birthday, I am pleased to present a selection of these tweets that may be of interest to fans of the play.

Enjoy!

The feed breaks off there. We can only assume that Macbeth chose that moment to step away from social media and instead turn his attention to the serious business of running Scotland.

But this collection of tweets remains a digital monument to a leader who was clearly way ahead of his time!

From Julius Caesar:

When could they say, till now, that talk’d of Rome,
That her wide walls encompass’d but one man?

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

My low talk: blatant corruption scandals oft went down as he madly helmed the White House.

So President Trump directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Andrew McCabe, the acting director of the FBI.

McCabe was set to retire anyway, but the administration chose to fire him so he wouldn’t get his full pension.

The president then crowed about the firing in a tweet.

Ranting and raving about new lows for this administration can get tiring after a while. Maybe that’s the point. Fortunately, I am constitutionally empowered to anagram passages from Shakespeare to express my disapproval, so that’s what I’m going to do.

I chose the speech from Richard III where Hastings laments his capricious treatment by Richard. Richard has sentenced him to death for a transparently minor offense, when the real reason is that Hastings doesn’t support Richard to become king. Hastings notes the dangers faced by others in the circle who may be enjoying his misfortunes thinking they’re safe.

From Richard III:

I prophesy the fearfull’st time to thee
That ever wretched age hath look’d upon.
Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head:
They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Trump, he hotly tweets: McCabe, he led the FBI. He’ll be fired home.

He’s married to a Democrat, so Trump kept heatedly asking how he voted as a loyalty oath theme.

Oh, hell.

That’s actually true.

Oh, hell.

From Sir Thomas More:

Nay, it has infected it with the palsey; for these bastards of dung, as you know they grow in dung, have infected us, and it is our infection will make the city shake, which partly comes through the eating of parsnips.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

President Trump, a dotard, cynically described fifty non-white nations as “shithole countries.” He speaks guff awkwardly without thinking, yet this one’s no gaffe.

Yeah, enough.

We have to impeach this racist thug.

What the great ones tweet, the less will anagram of.

From Twelfth Night:

Why, thou sayest well. I do now remember a saying, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Hell, I went from kooky wannabe to well-deified show boss to the White House (on my first shot)! Ha, me! Why, I’m a stable genius!

Let’s call it the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and President Hyde.

It all started last weekend, when a coalition of white supremacist organizations staged a demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. The idea was that the different alt-right factions, including the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, could come together and present a unified front for nationalism and racial purity. With swastika flags, burning torches, and chants such as “Jews will not replace us,” they presented an unambiguous message of anger and hate. Counter-protesters showed up to resist their message, and one particularly disturbed individual drove his car into them, injuring many, and killing Heather Heyer, age 32.

Before we go on, it should be clear that this is not in any way a left vs. right thing. This has nothing to do with Republican or Democratic ideology. Everyone in America should be against this, regardless of how you feel about the tax code or health care reform. And indeed, many prominent Republicans immediately spoke out against this protest and its message of hate. We should expect no less.

But on Saturday, as the events were still unfolding, President Trump came out to read a prepared statement, in which he stated that “we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence.” He then stopped reading, looked up, and added “on many sides… on many sides.”

Deflection is a common rhetorical technique, used by politicians and their supporters, mainly when they are losing the argument and want to shift the focus of the conversation. Push a Trump supporter (or President Trump himself) too far, and you’ll get an earful of Benghazi or Hillary’s e-mails. And, yes, we do it too when our back is against the wall. (Sure, Obama used drones, but Bush did it too!)

So there’s nothing unusual about deflection, and it’s easy to call it out when it happens. But why on earth would President Trump use such a technique, or any technique at all, to defend the white supremacists? Sure, you can use deflection to shift focus onto the counter-protesters if you want to. But why? It only makes sense if you see the alt-right as “your side.” Is that what the President was signaling?

Needless to say, many were left feeling unsatisfied with this statement on Saturday. Pushback against his comments became so ubiquitous that he was forced to issue another statement last Monday. This time, he said all of the things a President is supposed to say, decrying racism as evil, and naming the various hate groups as well as the name of the woman who died in the protest. Some said he looked like a hostage being forced to read a statement against his will. Others criticized him for not speaking out sooner. But he said everything we asked him to say, and if he had left it there, the issue would have been closed.

He did not leave it there.

The next day, he was making an announcement about infrastructure. But when he took questions, they were not about infrastructure. This time, the President, finally freed from the oppressive shackles of prepared statements written by his more thoughtful policy advisors, doubled down on his deflection away from the white supremacists. He never explicitly said both sides were equally to blame, but that seemed to be his attitude. He coined the term “alt-left” as though people who want to raise the minimum wage and implement a single-payer healthcare system were on the same moral plane as Nazis. He also implied that it was the counter-protestors who were physically attacking the alt-right, when all of the evidence I’ve seen is to the contrary. He also felt the need to point out that the white supremacists had a permit, while the counter-protesters did not. (Seriously, he said that.) This was a new low for the Trump presidency, and that’s no easy bar to clear.

But then, this past Monday, he gave an address laying out a foreboding agenda in Afghanistan. Content aside, he was calmly reading from the teleprompter, just like a real big-boy president. He was measured, dignified, and – dare I say it – uncharacteristically presidential. He began with an eloquent call for unity against division. Had he not already relinquished all moral authority to make such a statement, it would have been beautiful. And when he talked about Afghanistan, he projected strength and resolve. There was the occasional reference to the previous administration’s blame and more than a little unearned braggadocio, but he didn’t trip over the podium or light himself on fire, and I caught myself hoping to see more of this president moving forward.

It took exactly one day to burst that bubble. At a campaign rally (!) in Arizona on Tuesday, he gave a completely unhinged performance, telling an alternate-universe version of the story above, and attacking the media as fake news outlets out to get him personally.

At the moment, it feels like we have two presidents, and when he speaks, we don’t know which one we’re going to get. But let’s not be under any illusions about which one is the @realDonaldTrump.

From Twelfth Night:

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons;
A natural perspective, that is, and is not!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

I see two presidents: one, a non-factual peevish scab; another can pivot, read notation.

From The Taming of the Shrew:

And awful rule and right supremacy

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Uh… Trump defends an ugly racial war?

Here is the video of Tuesday’s press conference. I recommend you watch the whole thing, if you haven’t already. Future generations will be watching this in their social studies classrooms.

This week, President Trump was caught lying about receiving phone calls from the leaders of Mexico and of the Boy Scouts, both to pay him compliments they would be unlikely to deliver.

And while this is neither the first lie nor the worst lie from this president, in a way, this kind of casual lying for no real reason is even more disturbing than the big stuff. I believe it was Shakespeare who put it best…

From The Merry Wives of Windsor:

I do despise a liar as I do despise one that is false, or as I despise one that is not true.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

O, the President said a lie!

It is not so seditious to assess if a leader phoned a praise.

From Macbeth:

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love; now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

The Mooch shamed, even cudgeled, loyal men on behalf of hog Trump, who thinks of his administration as a television elimination show.

No! Be gone!