World War Tweet: The Megaton Thread!

[FunkMonk]

If I stick my head in the sand that means all the bad people go away, right?

The Tea Party/Freedom Caucus folk are getting the other end of the stick now 

[Valmy]

I had predicted the Freedom Caucus only had a few true believers. The rest would all suddenly love the Federal Government once their party won the White House. As per usual.

[Syt]

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-twitter-staffer-235263

How Trump's campaign staffers tried to keep him off Twitter

The trick? Making sure his media diet included a healthy dose of praise.

President Donald Trump's former campaign staffers claim they cracked the code for tamping down his most inflammatory tweets, and they say the current West Wing staff would do well to take note.

The key to keeping Trump's Twitter habit under control, according to six former campaign officials, is to ensure that his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise. And when no such praise was to be found, staff would turn to friendly outlets to drum some up — and make sure it made its way to Trump's desk.

"If candidate Trump was upset about unfair coverage, it was productive to show him that he was getting fair coverage from outlets that were persuadable," said former communications director Sam Nunberg. "The same media that our base digests and prefers is going to be the base for his support. I would assume the president would like see positive and preferential treatment from those outlets and that would help the operation overall."

The staff had one advantage as they aimed to manage candidate Trump's media diet: He rarely reads anything online, instead preferring print newspapers — especially his go-to, The New York Times — and reading material his staff brought to his desk. Indeed, his media consumption habits were on full display during his roller-coaster news conference this past Thursday, when he continually remarked on what the media would write "tomorrow," even as print outlets' websites already had posted stories about his remarks.

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Trump is also, however, a near-nonstop consumer of cable news, and his staff's efforts were not always enough to keep Trump from tweeting on topics that were far from his campaign's core message. Throughout the campaign, whatever messaging the candidate's staff had planned was continually accompanied — and often overshadowed — by a string of feuds that played out both on and off Twitter.

But his team believed that their strategies would keep Trump from taking to his preferred social media outlet to escalate his personal or political conflicts.

For example, when Trump engaged in a Twitter war with the father of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier in Iraq, Khizr Khan, the team set up a meeting with Gold Star Mothers of Florida and made sure to plant the story in conservative media. Breitbart also wrote stories about Khan's relationships with the Democratic Party. "We made sure that conservative media was aware of it, they connected the echo chamber," the former official said.

During another damage-control mission, when former Miss Universe Alicia Machado took to the airwaves to call out Trump for calling her "Miss Piggy" and "Miss Housekeeping," the communications team scrambled to place a story in conservative friendly outlets like Fox News, the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller and Breitbart.

A former senior campaign official said Nunberg and his successor, former communications director Jason Miller, were particularly skilled at using alternative media like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Fox News, Infowars and the Daily Caller to show Trump positive coverage.

And once they got the stories published, campaign officials with large numbers of Twitter followers would tweet them out.

They would also go to media amplifiers like Fox News hosts and conservative columnists to encourage them to tweet out the story so that they could print out and show a two-page list of tweets that show that they were steering the message. While Trump still couldn't contain his Twitter-rage with Machado, and ended up tweeting about a mystery sex-tape of the Hillary Clinton surrogate, aides say they dialed back even more posts.

"He saw there was activity so he didn't feel like he had to respond," the former campaign official said. "He sends out these tweets when he feels like people aren't responding enough for him."

The in-person touch is also important to keeping Trump from running too hot. One Trump associate said it's important to show Trump deference and offer him praise and respect, as that will lead him to more often listen. And If Trump becomes obsessed with a grudge, aides need to try and change the subject, friends say. Leaving him alone for several hours can prove damaging, because he consumes too much television and gripes to people outside the White House.

Part of the current problem is Trump is still adjusting to his new circumstances and has plenty of time to stew over negative reviews as he spends time alone in the evenings and early mornings as his wife, Melania Trump, continues living in New York as his youngest son, Barron, finishes the school year.

That alone time played a factor in Trump's response to revelations that his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, had — days after Trump attacked whom he labeled a "so-called" judge for blocking his administration's travel ban — criticized attacks on the judiciary.

White House officials anticipated that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch would distance himself from Trump's attack and thought the planned comments would help the nominee's bid, said a person with knowledge of the conversations.

The problem: Trump himself didn't like Gorsuch's "disheartening" and "demoralizing" critique. He fired off a tweet criticizing Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who repeated the comments, digging up a controversy over the senator's military record and accusing him of incorrectly characterizing Gorsuch's comments. Afterward, Blumenthal and other Democrats criticized Trump and said the president's comments would hurt his nominee's chances.

Asked whether aides and advisers liked the tweet, one White House official said sarcastically: "What do you think?"

[The Larch]

I'm sure he's the kind of boss who have employees printing out his emails for him.

[MadImmortalMan]

I'm sure he's the kind of boss who have employees printing out his emails for him.

Hillary had an employee just for that. His name is Oscar.

[Jacob]

News from the Twitter front:

On FOX & Friends Herman Cain just said that the media isn't telling you that Trump reduced the debt $12b in his 1st month.

...& compared that w/Obama increasing debt $200b in his 1st month. Turns out that's from a post circulating on wacky-right sites.

...but if Trump tweets that stat this morning, you know where he got it.

https://twitter.com/dbernstein/status/835470232907104256

The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/835479283699224576

[CountDeMoney]

  

[Berkut]

I love that is gets that multi-level stupid effect going for it...

[Admiral Yi]

I'm wondering if that might possibly be true on a cash basis.

[grumbler]

I'm wondering if that might possibly be true on a cash basis.

looking it up, it may well be.  The debt fluctuates a lot more than I had known.  High: $19.958T low $19.885T just within the first 30 days.

[jimmy olsen]

I'm wondering if that might possibly be true on a cash basis.

Probably, but there was that whole collapsing financial system and automotive industry he had to deal with at the time. The government going into debt at that time was reasonable.

[Berkut]

...hence my point about this being stupid on multiple levels.

It is stupid that is tweeting anything.
It is stupid that he is tweeting about this at all.
It is stupid that he is re-tweeting crap he heard on some alt-right site.
It is stupid that anyone would think it has anything to do with him to begin with, even if it is true.

Whether it is true or not is really the least stupid part of all of this. It is ridiculous whether it is factually correct or not.

[Tamas]

...hence my point about this being stupid on multiple levels.

It is stupid that is tweeting anything.
It is stupid that he is tweeting about this at all.
It is stupid that he is re-tweeting crap he heard on some alt-right site.
It is stupid that anyone would think it has anything to do with him to begin with, even if it is true.

Whether it is true or not is really the least stupid part of all of this. It is ridiculous whether it is factually correct or not.

Trump is a dumb narcissistic senile old man.

[Ed Anger]

[mongers]

...hence my point about this being stupid on multiple levels.

It is stupid that is tweeting anything.
It is stupid that he is tweeting about this at all.
It is stupid that he is re-tweeting crap he heard on some alt-right site.
It is stupid that anyone would think it has anything to do with him to begin with, even if it is true.

Whether it is true or not is really the least stupid part of all of this. It is ridiculous whether it is factually correct or not.

Trump is a dumb narcissistic senile old man.

Not that I'm disagreeing with what you and Berkut are saying, but I think this attribute is wrong, as is suggesting Trump is just mentally ill.

I think rather than senile, lazy would be a better word, as instead of putting in the effort to understand something he just resorts to bullshit and bluster to deal with many issues.

And guess what, those tools seem to have served him well down the years, so why make much of an effort to understand the new job or change some of his ways of doing things?