Donald Trump’s top aides considered asking Twitter to put a 15-minute delay on his tweets as they struggled to find a way to curtail his unpredictable and often destructive social media habit, a new report claims.
The New York Times published a report on Trump’s unprecedented use of the microblogging site to reach the American public, noting how Trump has used Twitter to announce major initiatives and foreign policy decisions — sometimes posting them to the public before even running it by top members of his administration. This played out in October when Trump announced a major change to U.S. military policy, moving a small group of troops in northern Syria and allowing the Turkish military to launch an offensive against America’s Kurdish allies there.
As the report noted, Trump’s decision and subsequent response as Turkey’s attacks led to the death of civilians and Kurdish troops was announced through “a series of contradictory tweets.”
The report noted that Trump’s impulsive Twitter posts have led to some major consternation among his top staff, who tried to come up with ways to curtail the habit. They seem to have backed away, as some found advantages in his social media approach, but the president’s need to tweet still gets in the way of normal White House proceedings.
“Early on, top aides wanted to restrain the president’s Twitter habit, even considering asking the company to impose a 15-minute delay on Mr. Trump’s messages,” the report noted. “But 11,390 presidential tweets later, many administration officials and lawmakers embrace his Twitter obsession, flocking to his social media chief with suggestions. Policy meetings are hijacked when Mr. Trump gets an idea for a tweet, drawing in cabinet members and others for wordsmithing. And as a president often at war with his own bureaucracy, he deploys Twitter to break through logjams, overrule or humiliate recalcitrant advisers and pre-empt his staff.”
As The Inquisitr reported, Trump’s aides have still tried to keep close tabs on his Twitter habits to avoid mishaps whenever possible. That was the case back in March, when aides reportedly followed the president to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after the public release of the Russia report summary, hoping to stop him from doing something rash.
Trump and his presidential campaign have had a mixed relationship with Twitter as a company. While the president has used the platform to reach voters and announce policy decisions, his campaign has also attacked the company after a decision this week to ban political ads.
