Donald Trump picked a real “straw man” in what critics said is an attempt to distract his followers from the way his administration is handling the Jeffrey Epstein case.
And, guess what, it’s actual straws — the paper kind, to be exact.
The GOP’s social media account posted a photo of the president Tuesday captioned “President Trump is Making Straws Great Again!” and “White House introduces rule canceling Biden’s paper straw mandate.”
The rule, published July 21, follows an executive order issued in February that was meant to roll back a federal push to use paper straws over plastic ones.
Under the new rule, government contractors are required to only offer straws that “have the strength and durability of plastic,” according to The Federalist.
Trump has griped about paper straws since at least 2019.
When signing this year’s executive order, he said that paper straws break “on occasion” and claimed that “they explode. If something’s hot, they don’t last very long — like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds.”
There is no evidence of paper straws exploding, but there is evidence that plastic straws, unlike the paper ones, can take centuries to decompose.
Trump’s new straw rule, detractors point out, comes right when he and his fellow Republicans have been trying to find all sorts of ways to distract MAGA followers from the ongoing controversy over the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Many people on social media noted that the straw announcement was just his latest weapon of mass distraction.
But it didn’t go so great for the president based on the responses.