What did Donald Trump do today?

He forgot he was president in 2020.

Trump continued to rage at Republicans in Indiana's state government today, still furious that they are unwilling to gerrymander the state's Congressional map to try to force one more Republican into office. 

As this site discussed yesterday, there is a good reason for the state party's hesitation: gerrymanders can become disasters for the party in power when there is a surge of votes for the other side—as is likely to happen in the 2026 midterms—because they mean the leading party wins each of its districts by fewer votes. That means that "safe" seats can suddenly become losses that wouldn't otherwise have happened. 

This is what Trump said specifically, in a post to his private microblogging site:

I will be strongly endorsing against any State Senator or House member from the Great State of Indiana that votes against the Republican Party, and our Nation, by not allowing for Redistricting for Congressional seats in the United States House of Representatives as every other State in our Nation is doing, Republican or Democrat. Democrats are trying to steal our seats everywhere, and we're not going to let this happen! This all began back with the Rigged Census. We must keep the Majority at all costs! Republicans must fight back!

Trump is referring here to the 2020 Census, the results of which were used to determine Congressional maps starting in 2022. Most of the actual counting took place in the calendar year 2020, but planning is on a ten-year cycle that kicked into high gear in early 2019. The count concluded on October 16, 2020.

In other words, the "Rigged Census" was conducted in its entirety during Donald Trump's presidential term, which lasted from January 20, 2017 to January 20, 2021. 

Trump also personally appointed the Director of the Census for the critical period, Stephen Dillingham, in 2018. Dillingham, a Trump loyalist, resigned on President Biden's first day in office amid accusations that he and a raft of other partisan Trump appointees had tried to rush the final tabulations before they were ready so that Trump, in the final days of his term, would be able to issue orders excluding immigrants from the official count. (Immigrants, documented and otherwise, are part of the count by law.) 

This is not the first time Trump has gotten confused about when his first term was. Just last month, he tried to blame the January 6 riots on the "BIDEN FBI," even though the purpose of the attack on the Capitol that Trump himself incited was to prevent Joe Biden from becoming President. The Director of the FBI at the time, Christopher Wray, was Trump's handpicked appointee. And, of course, he's whined for years about the "RIGGED 2020 ELECTION," when—again—Trump himself was the head of state.

Neither Trump nor the White House has commented on what he meant by keeping a Republican majority in the House "at all costs."

Why does this matter?

• It's very, very bad if a president isn't capable of remembering basic facts about his first term. 

• In a democracy, the only thing that needs to be protected "at all costs" is the right of the people to choose their own representatives.