Twitter Promptly Calls Out Donald Trump For Boasting About Positive News Story Written By His Own Aides

Most people know that President Donald Trump does not have the most ideal relationship with the media, often criticizing news pieces or networks in general for providing coverage that he tends to label “fake.”

However in a rare move, the president took to his Twitter account on the first day of 2019 to offer praise for a newly published article from the Washington Examiner, though, as noted by the Huffington Post, his fellow users on the social media platform were quick to point out something strange about his positive nod to the news.

On Tuesday, January 1, President Trump proudly boasted about a new article published on conservative news website the Washington Examiner from the day before, titled “MAGA List: 205 ‘historic results’ help Trump make case for 2020 re-election.'”

The lengthy article “highlights 14 major issue areas” along with an extensive list of 205 accomplishment points and initiatives “all aimed at bolstering the president’s statements and tweets that this has been a successful administration,” creating an outline for a 2020 platform for Trump to run on.

The piece earned a positive review from the president, who even gave it a rare label of “true”–an accomplishment that most news outlets have not been able to earn since Donald Trump took office two years ago.

It appears that other Twitter users took the time to review the list as well, potentially at the recommendation of the president, though they were quick to provide a small detail about the content of the article that Trump had not shared–that it was actually compiled by his own White House aides.

There were two major instances in the article from the Washington Examiner that gave away the real curators of the list, including a line saying “the following is the list compiled by the White House” ahead of the presentation of the 205 points.

“Great moments in Media: Trump’s team gives the Washington Examiner an ‘exclusive’ list of 205 supposed ‘historic’ accomplishments he will campaign on; the Examiner just publishes it in full; Trump tweets about it as if it came from the Examiner,” Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star Daniel Dale wrote on Twitter in response to the president’s review of the piece.

“The Washington Examiner (laughable enough) was given a list to print, by you,” another user, @markergirl1, wrote, responding to Trump’s original tweet. “That’s not reporting, that’s propaganda.”

User @thamilton noted that the fact that the list was in fact provided by the White House, the president’s boast has “a whole new slant,” something Trump and his team often criticize news outlets negatively having toward the administration.