All the president’s Tweets

There is no cunning plan to manipulate the news cycle. He’s just reacting to morning telly


THE president’s dearest supporters and bitterest opponents are united in their wish that less attention be paid to his social-media habit. Stephen Miller, a policy adviser, and Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, have tried valiant defences, but many Republicans prefer to feign ignorance. Some of Mr Trump’s critics detect a more insidious motive, “a weapon to control the news cycle”, as George Lakoff, a professor emeritus at Berkeley, puts it. In this reading, the president is a puppet-master whose tweets distract from scandal and divert attention from substantive issues. These critics have it backwards: Mr Trump is actually taking cues from the media, specifically Fox News, an entertainment channel, rather than attempting to lead them.

Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, a progressive watchdog, has documented nearly 60 cases in the past three months where Mr Trump appears to be tweeting in response to Fox News segments. The alarming North Korea tweet came 12 minutes after a report on the channel about Mr Kim’s “nuclear button”. Michael Wolff’s new book says the president has three television screens installed in his bedroom; the New York Times reports that he has a “Super TiVo” device, allowing him to record cable news and watch it later; private schedules obtained by Axios show the president takes hours of “executive time”—a delightful euphemism for telly, tweeting and telephoning. The bulk of Mr Trump’s tweets as president have come in the early morning when “Fox & Friends”, a fawning programme, airs (see chart).

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