One can certainly understand if the media is a tad confused. This week, Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway chided media for taking President Donald Trump’s tweets so seriously and denied that tweets are one of his preferred methods of communication. Shortly thereafter White House press secretary Sean Spicer reminded media that Trump’s tweets are “official statements” and thus serious articulations of policy.
Conway was incredulous when asked about Trump’s attacks on the mayor of London within hours of the most recent terrorist attack. The comments led to politicians across the political spectrum denouncing Trump’s comments in both the U.K. and the U.S. However, when asked about the tweets, Conway objected to “this obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president.” NBC Host Craig was understandably taken aback by the comment since Trump has repeatedly stressed the important of his use of Twitter and noted “That’s his preferred method of communication with the American people.” Conway shot back “that’s not true.” It is not true that Twitter is Trump’s preferred method of communication?
Trump himself pushed back on the most recent criticism of his tweets for taking the words of London Mayor Sadiq Khan out of context and undermining this Administration’s case for the Supreme Court. He reaffirmed the important of Twitter to both his winning and keeping the White House: “The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.”
Spicer then made clear that these tweets are “official statements” and not some playful presidential past time: “The President is the President of the United States,” Spicer said at his daily press briefing. “So they’re considered official statements by the President of the United States.”
With the damaging tweets on the pending Supreme Court case, the affirmation of these tweets as “official statements” are likely to be played back to the Administration in upcoming briefing by opponents to the immigration order.
Indeed, it is chilling to think of these often ill-considered tweets as a form of official statements. Yet, it is bizarre to think that the media should not take the tweets seriously. Trump is not some character yelling incoherently in the metro that you try to ignore. He is the President of the United States and his words have impact around the world.
The main issue I take with reliance on a single private corporation for the dissemination of announcements from government officials and politicians is that control of the messaging can be subject to Terms of Use that are contrary to public records law and can be subject to whims on behalf of the provider.
The practice is manifestly different from using webpages hosted on government servers for those very reasons where the information is protected. While it can be argued that a president can use a telephone for communication we must recognize that common carriers are regulated and restricted in that they generally cannot decide if free speech or official use cannot be subject to censorship.
On another matter I suspect that perhaps the President is having some difficulty adjusting to the role of a public official in how it differs from that of a CEO of a large private corporation in that his propensity to ignore unimportant matters such as how the press feels about his company is suddenly relevant as a president. Yet frankly I doubt President Trump cares so much about what the press thinks about him and he will speak his mind regardless.
One issue that I believe the press and President Trump’s detractors have overly assumed is that their outrage at some of his antics is colossal in significance might not necessarily be so in the minds of the average citizen voter. If the press continues to whine and feign outrage at every occasion, with the exception of people who have become glued to the TV in their fear of the president, the press and pundits might lose credibility with those voters who simply want to focus on their own lives and don’t actually give a damn about political intrigues.
If the federal democrats fail to recognize this and continue to cater to sycophant corporatists, social justice warriors and identity politics they are going to lose badly over time. The federal democrats have already destroyed their interest in traditional average Americans who work in middle class jobs and who generally favor unions and fair working conditions. Eventually, their only support will come from liberal city dwellers and if the average Joe perceives a better deal from other parties, they will have nothing compelling to offer.
Damn that Trump, why won’t he just fit into the tidy little box like every other President in the last 50 years. Things were so much better when the citizens were asleep. On the upside, his nonconformity is making a whole lot of people in the political class (including the media) uncomfortable.
More popcorn please.
Sigh. That’s about as logical as millennials suing him because they got blocked on Twitter. They aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, these folks, their brains are incapable of parsing or
nuance. They just know when their spoiled little minds feel they aren’t being treated like the royalty yhey imagine themselves to be (they should really study The Middle Ages and see how royalty was treated when monarchies fell). Still, it’s good for a laugh or two, the cluelessness comes off more childish than anything, a grown adult with the mentality of an eight year-old is kinda cute.
Really, no way to get edit spellcheck maloperations?
So, is obfuscation, incompetence and idiocy to be taken seriously, or. It?
President Trump has to tweet. the liberal news outlets can not edit the tweets and it is driving them crazy.
rejected
The Orange Dimwit doesn’t deserve all the analysis he necessarily inspires.
He complains rather than works, so in less than two years when the vacuous campaign starts all over again, he can say hey, now we’re ready to push the agenda through, so keep America great by re-electing your dear leader. The media, waaaa. (A future direct quote.)
Where’s his plans for IS by the way. I thought we were going to win “quickly.”
If Trump was really serious about protecting the country, he would be acting much differently. And he would not have let Bannon craft the initial Executive Order. (Bannon, who more resembles an anarchist than an administrator, wants to destroy the existing order.) Trump cares about himself, his family and his friends, not the country as a whole. Any experienced, intelligent person with some common sense could have come up with a way to restrict immigration in a way that passes muster, if that was Trump’s goal.
But that is not his goal. He’s more interested in lining his (and his family’s) pockets, picking fights, showmanship, and pushing heads of state out of the way to glorify his own ego than he is in solving problems.
Oh, I know, Hillary, Benghazi, Obama, Rahman Noodle Emmanuel, etc. etc.
Republicans are driving the bus now, and as much as most of them can’t stand Trump, they thirst for power so much that they will virtually ignore any and all transgressions by Trump in an effort to maximize their power. But it will be Republicans who force Trump to leave,when they understand that the “political math” requires that they do so to have a chance of surviving politically in a post- Trump world.
Rejected
Freaking hilarious; are your fingers in your ears while you recite something like this:
Then there’s this:
https://www.wired.com/2017/06/trumps-habit-twitter-blocking-may-violate-first-amendment/
No different than my blocking of unwanted material, I started with turning off the TV. Then put the TV in the garbage. by your sources interpretation I would have to have a TV on all the time. Along with the Freedomof Speech is the freedom to walk away from such assemblies and ignore them. Like Obama did when he freelanced those non binding personal deals with Iran and Al Gores Paris Accords. Diffrence is I don’t have a Congress to condtend with and I don’t need any votes but mine to stay in office.
You’re an idiot.
if Trump chooses, as POTUS, to dispense his thoughts on Twitter and yet block accounts you should be concerned.
This is not a TV show, Michael, and Trump is not a “personality” anymore.
According to Trump’s valiant spin protectors, his tweets are official communications from the government — or maybe not according to this post by JT.
Think this through, if your capable beyond your ‘rejected’ responses.
He may be a twit who tweets but he can be quite accurate. If the Supreme Court decides to quash the Executive Order on inmates or migrants coming into our nation state then all hell can break loose.
The Brits are in cold water after breaking through thin ice. Same with the French.
” If the Supreme Court decides to quash the Executive Order on inmates or migrants coming into our nation state then all hell can break loose.”
If they quash the Executive Order (which never took effect because the courts already put it on hold). How exactly will all hell break loose? Won’t things be exactly as they already are?
Yes, “exactly as they already are.” Just the occasional massacre by Muslim jihadists. Nothing to get concerned about……
And when all hell breaks loose then the media will get off the high horse and quit bitching about the EO and start thinking how dumb the EU and Britain are for letting all those terrorists into their borders. We need concentration camps– particularly on the West Coast. Put one in every sanctuary city. Head em up and round em up. Lock em up. Kill some. Castrate others. Be a beast and avoid the feast.
And yes there will be some terrorist events coming to a theatre near you. Don’t let your meat loaf.
Yup, punish the innocent to get at the guilty. But even if “all hell breaks loose,” how likely is anyone to get killed by a terrorist, as opposed to in a traffic accident, or by some ordinary bank robber, or even by a lightning strike?
If only they round up “Jack Ruby”!
Tell me of any “occasional massacre” that the travel ban would have stopped?
”The Brits are in cold water after breaking through thin ice. Same with the French.”
Exactly… and despite all the hollow, straining to be lofty assurances and protestations of strength and projections of ”defeating” the whoever, I can see clearly the Brits and the French are freaked. And they should be.
There is a very old British saying…something about “muddling through.” They have their ways we have swamp walking.
They can go out and buy fresh supplies of stiff upper lips, slap them on and grimace thru it all they want… It isn’t working. We’ve heard all the empty phrases and promises, as have the British and the French. I thought Khan looked particularly silly at the mic, funny little shrimp of a Muslim nothing, protesting blah blah. And the latest from May is sheer panic.
They have no idea what to do. They’ve let in the horrors and the horrors or the children of the horrors are turning on them.
“Trump is not some character yelling incoherently in the metro.”
He is exactly this! 😂😂😂
Yup.