Florida Man Donald Trump has said that if elected President of the United States again, he will jail so-called "election fraudsters" - with a baffling warning to Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg. Or Zuckerbucks as Trump put it.

The highly stable genius made this declaration on Truth Social, Trump's digital fiefdom and his alternative to Twitter/X.

"All I can say is that if I'm elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time. We already know who you are. DON'T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!" Trump rattled off.

It should go without saying that there is no suggestion Zuckerberg is or was involved in election fraud. On one level you could take Trump's message as a simple one of: Don't break the law, not even you Mark, which seems reasonable. On the other hand, let's be real, Trump's clearly name-checking the Meta CEO as a threat.

This outburst was the conclusion of a long rant this week by the real-estate tycoon that made sweeping accusations against President Biden and the US Department of Justice, which he called an "incapacitated moron" and "corrupt" respectively.

Trump claims the Biden administration hopes to give non-citizens the right to vote in federal elections, something that would be unconstitutional without an amendment and thus that assertion is simply wrong.

That said, Republicans in the US House of Reps have just passed a law bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote, and the legislation is unlikely to make it through the Senate.

This is all election posturing. The Republicans want to give the impression the Democrats are trying to win the White House race through cheating by encouraging non-citizens to vote, which is already illegal in federal polls. The Biden administration has pointed out [PDF] there are adequate safeguards in place to help prevent that fraud from happening.

It's not too surprising Trump counts the Facebook supremo among his primary political enemies, as the two have a decade-ish-long and mostly one-sided feud going on.

All the way back in 2015, when the reality TV show celebrity host and reportedly successful businessman hadn't even yet become the Republican nominee for President, Trump released his immigration reform policy and specifically called out rival Marco Rubio, who he described as "Mark Zuckerberg's personal Senator."

From then on, Trump has semi-regularly trash-talked Zuckerberg, who has only responded every now and then. The situation escalated dramatically, however, when Trump was booted off Facebook (and other platforms) in the wake of the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters. The ex-president was unbanned from Facebook last year, though clearly that hasn't made Trump any less mean toward the multi-billionaire Zuckerberg.

The hatred apparently runs so deeply for the man of Mar-a-Lago that he doesn't want TikTok banned in the United States, because as he put it "if you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck will double their business."

In addition to jailing "election fraudsters," Trump has also pledged on the first day of his hypothetical second term as America's President to break up offshore wind farms, which apparently are deadly to whales. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/11/trump_zuckerberg/