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Aides give up on trying to control Trump's tweets
Source: Politico
Aides give up on trying to control Trump’s tweets
Trump’s post on Franken allegations was the latest example of the president's habit of using his Twitter account to draw fire, rather than deflecting it.
By ANNIE KARNI 11/17/2017 05:56 PM EST
When candidate Donald Trump waged a Twitter war against Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who rebuked him from the stage of the Democratic National Convention, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were sent in for a “tough-love talk” about the efficacy of the tweets, two former campaign officials recalled.
Controlling potentially damaging tweets was a job left mostly to the legal team in the early days of the administration. Marc Kasowitz, a former Trump attorney, and Jay Sekulow, a current member of the president's legal team, gave Trump one simple rule to guide his tweeting habit: Don’t comment online about the Russia investigation. “The message was, tweet about policy, tweet about politics, but don’t attack the special counsel,” recalled another former aide.
None of the advice seemed to have any lasting effect on a president who views acting on his own impulses as a virtue. And these days, the staff has basically stopped trying: There is no character inhabiting the West Wing who is dispatched to counsel the president when he aims the powerful weapon of his Twitter feed at himself.
On Thursday night, Trump appeared to do just that.
After keeping silent for more than a week about mounting sexual misconduct allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, the president weighed in on the sexual harassment claim against Democratic Sen. Al Franken — a pair of tweets that drove a late-night news cycle but were greeted internally at the White House with a shrug and a yawn.
-snip-
Trump’s post on Franken allegations was the latest example of the president's habit of using his Twitter account to draw fire, rather than deflecting it.
By ANNIE KARNI 11/17/2017 05:56 PM EST
When candidate Donald Trump waged a Twitter war against Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who rebuked him from the stage of the Democratic National Convention, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were sent in for a “tough-love talk” about the efficacy of the tweets, two former campaign officials recalled.
Controlling potentially damaging tweets was a job left mostly to the legal team in the early days of the administration. Marc Kasowitz, a former Trump attorney, and Jay Sekulow, a current member of the president's legal team, gave Trump one simple rule to guide his tweeting habit: Don’t comment online about the Russia investigation. “The message was, tweet about policy, tweet about politics, but don’t attack the special counsel,” recalled another former aide.
None of the advice seemed to have any lasting effect on a president who views acting on his own impulses as a virtue. And these days, the staff has basically stopped trying: There is no character inhabiting the West Wing who is dispatched to counsel the president when he aims the powerful weapon of his Twitter feed at himself.
On Thursday night, Trump appeared to do just that.
After keeping silent for more than a week about mounting sexual misconduct allegations against Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, the president weighed in on the sexual harassment claim against Democratic Sen. Al Franken — a pair of tweets that drove a late-night news cycle but were greeted internally at the White House with a shrug and a yawn.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/17/trump-al-franken-tweets-twitter-247662
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