Trump claims ‘Noble Prize’ tweets were sarcastic then shares deepfake Biden video in barrage of conspiracy-laden tweets

US president lashes out at perceived enemies amid growing pressure over his handling of coronavirus pandemic

Amid sinking poll ratings and a tanking economy brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump spent an extraordinary evening on Twitter promoting conspiracy theories and lashing out at his political adversaries.

The prolonged barrage of tweets on Sunday came as the total number of confirmed American Covid-19 deaths surpassed 55,000, a devastating total which has seen Mr Trump come under increasing pressure over perceptions he has been slow to respond to the crisis.

At around 7pm, Mr Trump began his Twitter spree by claiming inaccurate tweets he had posted earlier in the day in which he angrily complained about journalists winning “Noble Prizes” were sarcastic.

“Does anybody get the meaning of what a so-called Noble (not Nobel) Prize is, especially as it pertains to Reporters and Journalists?” Mr Trump tweeted.

“Noble is defined as, ‘having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals.’ Does sarcasm ever work?”

Despite his sarcasm claim – the second time in a matter of days he has used it in defence of an error – Mr Trump deleted the initial posts, which called for reporters to hand back their “Nobles” and for the “Noble Committee” to demand them back.

Trump's deleted tweets on the 'Noble Prize' (Twitter)

The use of the word “Noble” was likely an accidental misspelling of the “Nobel Prize”, which Mr Trump appeared to confuse with the Pulitzer Prize. The former is not awarded to journalists.

Mr Trump later attacked Washington Post reporters as “slime balls” and promoted a false claim the newspaper publishes inaccurate headlines about him 96 per cent of the time.

At around 9pm, Mr Trump retweeted a post by conservative TV host John Cardillo, which wrongly claimed federal investigations into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia and Mr Trump’s impeachment last year over a pressure campaign against Ukraine were “failed coup attempts”.

The tweet also suggested without providing evidence that officials were attempting to politically damage Mr Trump by artificially inflating coronavirus mortality rates.

After sharing a series of tweets attacking Democratic lawmakers Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mr Trump took the extraordinary step of promoting an online article which claimed falsely that Russia favoured Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

US intelligence agencies unanimously concur Moscow intervened on behalf of Mr Trump in 2016, and just last week the Senate intelligence committee, which is Republican-led, reaffirmed its support for that conclusion.

Following promotion of another evidence-free claim, this time that his convicted former national security adviser Michael Flynn was “framed by his own government”, Mr Trump retweeted an unsettling deepfake video showing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee licking his lips while looking into the camera.

Mr Trump concluded his prolonged outburst by repeating a claim he has made multiple times that the coronavirus “cure can’t be worse than the problem itself”, a popular refrain from right-wing politicians who fear the national lockdown to slow the spread of Covid-19 more than the virus itself.