While President Donald Trump claims that his Twitter feed is a medium for getting his “honest and unfiltered message out,” it's becoming increasingly clear that members of his administration should be worried.
In recent months we’ve seen White House staff taking various approaches to dealing with Trump’s Twitter trouble. But it appears that almost nothing has stopped Trump from indulging in his social-media routines.
And it's led to general confusion.
On Tuesday press secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump's tweets are "official statements by the president of the United States."
But as Salon noted on Wednesday, his stance was contradicted — by another Trump official:
Spicer’s position somewhat undercuts a complaint made by White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Monday. During an appearance on “The Today Show,” Conway was confronted with a tweet issued by Trump that criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan with a quote that had actually been taken out of context. As the exchange became increasingly heated, Conway complained that the media has “this obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what of he does as president.”
We have two contradictory statements from two on-the-record White House staffers, with neither providing a definitive answer to how we should treat the president's social media missives.
It would be major problem, say, if the White House wanted to argue that the president's "official statement" on his "travel ban" shouldn't be taken to mean that it's an official travel ban.
So what's the full extent of the problem — and a possible solution? Watch the video to consider this.
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