But with Trump, there’s always a tweet.

“If we don’t clean up OUR COUNTRY of the garbage soon, we are just going to do a death spiral!” Trump tweeted Sept. 17, 2013, one day after a government contractor killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard.

That Trump’s latest controversy again centers on a paradox — in this case, defending the right to criticize the United States, but only when it suits him — is not surprising. Indeed, much of Trump’s presidency is a paradox, and this week was no different.

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Trump has spent years criticizing the United States, often praising foreign dictators and himself in the process, examples of which you can watch in the video above.

According to Trump, the United States has long had “stupid” leaders that the world “laughs” at. When Trump launched his presidential bid, he said the United States is “becoming a third-world country.” During his inauguration, Trump condemned the condition of the country, referring to it as “American carnage.”

Trump has also repeatedly questioned the idea of American exceptionalism.

“Other nations and other countries don’t want to hear about American exceptionalism,” Trump said on Fox News in September 2013. “They’re insulted by it, and that’s what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was saying.”

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In his book “Crippled America,” Trump wrote, “The idea of American Greatness, of our country as the leader of the free and unfree world, has vanished.”

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Told in 2017 that Putin is a “killer,” Trump said, “You think our country’s so innocent?”

Trump’s hypocrisy has also spread to Republicans who previously warned that he would “destroy” the party.

Asked about Trump’s racist remarks this week, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said they were not racist.

“[A] Somali refugee embracing Trump would not have been asked to go back,” Graham said. “If you’re a racist, you want everybody from Somalia to go back.”

Graham later tweeted that accusations of racism “comes with the territory” of being a Republican president. (In 2015, Graham himself called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”)

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Later on Friday, when Trump was asked for the 26th time this week whether he disavowed his racist remarks and supported the congresswomen’s First Amendment rights to criticize the United States, he pivoted instead to his own First Amendment rights.