Trump's 18 worst Twitter moments of 2018, from nuclear war threats to 'smocking gun'

By now, we thought it would either all be over and we'd be talking about a new president, or we'd be scavenging for food through an apocalyptic wasteland while the nuclear fallout slowly corroded our cells.

It was a great and prosperous vision but, alas, we're still here and Donald Trump is still the president. And to make matters worse, he's still allowed to use Twitter and he doesn't appear to have gotten any better at it.

Sure, his tweets do serious numbers, but he almost never posts any dank memes and isn't too big a fan of a retweet or threading his posts together, which is probably the most unforgivable social media sin of them all.

He's also only ever liked seven tweets, despite being on the website since 2009, which just isn't very nice at all. Curiously, only three of those liked tweets are still visible, so for old times sake, let's take a look at them.

Thought provoking stuff, we're sure you'll agree.

Considering that he tweets at almost every opportunity he gets and has zero filters, his ramblings have been fascinating in the past 12 months, considering nearly everything has gone wrong for Donnie.

The month of December has been particularly interesting as he's clearly felt the strain following the endless revelations and testimonies coming out of the Robert Mueller Russia probe.

We're not going to definitively say this, but 2018 might have been Trump's most deranged and bizarre year on Twitter and, because we like you and know that you love a good Trump Twitter meltdown, we've put all his oddest moments in one article (much like we did last year, but we've abandoned the Friends analogy as that was just weird).

1. Almost starting a nuclear war

It was only three days into the year and Trump had already had enough of everything and, rather than just resign and let someone else get on with the job, he wanted to take everyone else down with him in a blaze of glory.

As tensions between the US and North Korea continued to escalate, Trump thought it was a good idea to threaten Kim Jong-un with his 'bigger and more powerful' nuclear button that apparently works.

As you're sitting here right now and reading this, it's safe to say that the nuclear holocaust wasn't unleashed and that everything turned out just fine.

In hindsight, it's completely bizarre to read tweets like this now, given that Trump and Kim are best buddies.

2. Being really smart and a very stable genius

This already seems like an eternity ago, but it was only in January. Credit where credit is due, he really did get the year off to a bang.

In the wake of the claims made by Michael Wolff in his highly critical book on Trump's White House, the president went on an early morning Twitter rant where he covered many subjects, but mostly his own mental health.

Not only is he "like, really smart" but he is also a "very stable genius".

3. Blaming Obama for not wanting to go to Battersea

A few days after his bold claims about his own mental health, Trump unexpectedly cancelled a planned trip to London for the oddest of reasons.

Not wishing to travel to Wandsworth, where the new US embassy is located, Trump blamed the Obama administration for moving the building to an 'off-location'.

It was actually the Bush administration that organised this relocation, but we can hardly expect Trump to know that. Also, we're kinda with Trump on this one. Have you used Southern Rail recently?

4. Dissing the NHS

Like his fellow Republicans, Trump isn't a big fan of free health care and has done everything in his power to try and prevent the Democrats from introducing a system to dissimilar to the UK's own National Health Service.

When trying to denounce the Democrats' plans, he managed to confuse a protest march in February, where members of the public called on the government to give the NHS more money, as a sign that the service was failing and going broke, rather than being strangled to death by a lack of funding, staff and bed shortages.

Trump's misinterpretation was actually so bad that it even wound up the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who probably wanted to take all the credit for trying to ruin the NHS himself. Hunt said in response to Trump:

 I may disagree with claims made on that march but not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover. 

NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance.

5. Complimenting Ivanka whilst also taking a subtle pop at Mike Pence

The Trump administration was all over the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics held in South Korea back in February.

Sarah Sanders, Mike Pence and Ivanka Trump all showed up at a competition where people predominantly compete on slippery surfaces, to show just how well they also manage to continuously fall flat on their face and somehow continue to get back up.

When Ivanka arrived there on 23 February, Trump posted this, which at first glance seems fair enough, but only closer inspection is full of shade, thrown right in the direction of Pence and Sanders.

6. Thank you, Kanye, very cool!

Remember when Kanye West was a ranting and raving right-wing, MAGA hat-wearing, slavery apologist, who couldn't stop tweeting about Trump until he realised that people didn't like it?

Yes, that was this year too, and it all began back in April when Kanye began complimenting the POTUS on Twitter and even called him his 'brother'.

Always fond of a compliment, Trump responded to the rapper by saying thanks and that his words were 'very cool!'

This bizarre love affair continued until October when Kanye was invited to the White House, something which even Trump seemed to regret.

7. His response to the Santa Fe school shooting

On 18 May, a teenager entered Sante Fe High School in Texas with a shotgun and .38 revolver and shot dead ten people.

At the time, it was the 22nd event of this nature to have occurred in the United States in 2018, and further highlighted the drastic need for new reforms and legislation to be introduced in order to prevent more needless shootings and deaths from happening.

Trump had made some rather half-hearted suggestions on how to combat the issue without actually banning guns, but his response to this particular shooting might have been his worst.

It was so bad that 19-year-old Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, managed to post a more thoughtful and presidential statement than the actual president.

8. Spelling his wife's name wrong

We all know that Melania and Donald have a bit of a frosty relationship, but it is really telling when he manages to spell her name completely wrong.

Well on 19 May of this year, Trump managed to refer to Melania as 'Melanie' in a tweet that was soon deleted (a rare moment, to say the least).

Picture: Twitter/ Donald J. Trump

A tweet with the correct spelling was posted shortly after, but it wasn't like anyone hadn't already noticed.

It's not like they haven't been together since 2005 or anything like that.

9. Showing sympathy for journalists who were shot dead despite being part of the problem

We don't really need to go into how much Trump hates 'the fake news mainstream media' as he more or less talks about it every day on Twitter.

Well, he changed his tone following the Capital Gazette newsroom shooting in Annapolis, Maryland on 28 June, which left five people dead.

Honestly, the hypocrisy just beggars belief. Shame on you Donald. Shame on you.

10. Peddling conspiracy theories

A lot of conspiracy theorists of fans of Donald Trump but we never put him down as one. That was until he started to push his own conspiracy theories on Twitter.

In July he began ranting about a completely unfounded theory about the 'SHADOW BANNING' of Republicans and conservatives on social media.

At that point in time, several prominent Trump supporters such as Alex Jones were being wiped from major social media sites for violating their terms of use.

Somehow, someway, someone told Trump that this was part of an operation from internet bigwigs to eradicate right-wing voices from the world wide web.

Never wishing to disappoint his dear old dad, Donald Trump Jr also shared the theory. He's probably still waiting to receive that Christmas dinner invite.

11. Calling LeBron James and Don Lemon dumb

A long-running and unlikely feud reignited between Trump and basketball superstar LeBron James.

The NBA star has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump's presidency and condemned his actions, specifically sighting the NFL protests, in an interview with CNN's Don Lemon in August.

The 33-year-old said:

[Trump is] using sports to kinda divide us. Sports has never been something that divides people. It's always been something that brings someone together.

Trump eloquently replied with this.

12. Blocking a cat

This is something that Trump tweeted, more something that he did on Twitter.

Considering that he is probably the most trolled person on the planet, it takes a lot to get blocked by Trump but out of all the accounts that run him down, he decided that a little cat was just going a step overboard and blacklisted the mog.

13. These tweets about Christine Blasey Ford

Trump's appointment of judge Brett Kavanaugh, and the subsequent investigations into a potential sexual assault that he committed on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford while they were both in college in the 1980s, was one of the biggest stories of the year.

Although Kavanaugh eventually walked away freely and was appointed to the Supreme Court, the case opened a lot of eyes to the trauma that victims of sexual assault live with on a daily basis.

Trump couldn't quite get his head around this though, as he failed to grasp why the alleged assault wasn't reported about when it first took place 36 years ago.

Trump's complete lack of empathy for Ford inspired the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport where victims of sexual assault bravely shared their stories online.

14. I will always capitalise the word Country!

Trump grammar is often all over the place. Spelling mistakes. Erratic capital letters. Constantly changing his tone.

It makes him prime picking for a good bit of trolling from successful authors or child fantasy novels, but on 19 October he attempted to explain one of his more curious quirks.

He announced, for no apparent reason, that whenever he refers to the USA in a tweet he will always capitalise the word 'Country'.

OK, Donald. Thanks for that.

15. 'The caravans are made up of some very tough fighters and people'

During the midterm elections, which resulted in heavy losses in the house for the Republican's, Trump did everything in his power to demonstrate that he was doing the best job for America.

This included demonising a large group of migrants from Central America who were attempting to enter the US via the Mexico border. Their convoy became collectively known as 'the caravan' and Trump couldn't wait to see the back of them.

In his attempts to show a powerful front and stop them from entering the US, Trump declared that he was going to send the military to the border to deal with the 'tough fighters' and 'very bad thugs'.

UNICEF reported that of the 3,600 migrants in the caravan, 2,300 of them were children, who were later tear-gassed as they tried to enter the country.

16. Sharing Game of Thrones memes

When addressing the very serious issue of reimposing nuclear sanctions upon Iran, you would hope that a powerful world leader would use some intelligence, decorum and a statesmen like dialogue to firmly lay out his plans.

Not Donald Trump, who posted a Game of Thrones meme declaring that 'Sanctions are coming'.

We can't be sure if Trump has watched every episode of the hit HBO show but, if he does need any pointers, we're sure he can always talk to Michael Gove.

17. Failing to have even the most basic understanding of climate change

Many of the tweets that we've listed here could go down as Trump's worst ever, but the one that he posted on 22 November completely beggars belief.

That's right, the president managed to confuse weather with climate change, which is of a grave concern for us all.

Even more concerning is that a teenager from India managed to show a greater understanding of the effects of global warming than the most powerful person on the planet.

18. 'Smocking gun'

We're almost at the end of this fun trip down memory lane and, boy, what a journey it's been.

We've truly covered every subject here; Nuclear war. Sexual assault. Demonising immigrants. School shootings. Mike Pence.

Fortunately for those who have stayed with us until the bitter end (we do dearly appreciate your time and dedication to the cause) we've saved the best for last.

Remember 'covfefe'? Well, Trump managed to top that on 10 December when he tweeted about James Comey's testimony to the Russia investigation.

Feeling quite content with himself, Trump declared that the "Democrats can't find a Smocking Gun.' That's right a 'smocking gun' and he spelt it wrong twice and even capitalised it.

Sadly, if the Russia investigation goes a certain way, then this is probably the last time that we will get to cover Trump's tweets in such depth as we're pretty sure they don't allow Twitter in prison.

More: Nancy Pelosi mocked Trump's 'manhood' and border wall - and she became the internet's new hero