Staffers for President Donald Trump claim they’ve “cracked the code” on keeping his infamously inflammatory Twitter habits under control. But have they?
On Thursday’s edition of Morning Joe on MSNBC, co-anchors Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough dissected Politico White House correspondent Tara Palmeri about her recent article, “How Trump’s campaign staffers tried to keep him off Twitter.”
Palmeri claimed that, in recent weeks, Trump has “run a bit cooler” on Twitter because his staffers are “controlling his media diet.”
Whereas Trump typically reads the New York Times, the Washington Post and other outlets that criticize the president, staffers are now feeding him Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Washington Examiner and other publications that favor him.
After Morning Joe guest Donny Deutsche remarked, “So the strategy is ‘look at the happy bear and we’ll be OK?’,” Palmeri replied, “The only reason he tweets is when he thinks that the message isn’t going his way, that he thinks his team isn’t fighting back enough to put his message forward.”
Deeper into the Morning Joe segment, called Keeping Trump’s Twitter Habit Under Control, co-anchor Willie Geist conceded that Trump effectively used Twitter during his campaign but that the activity has since gone off the rails.
For instance, Geist noted that Trump tweeted about a nonexistent Swedish terror attack, forcing the country to reassure citizens that one had not occurred.
“It’s embarrassing,” Brzezinski quipped.
Palmeri said Trump “Does not do well with time alone watching TV” and that he “stew[s] and think[s] about things, and his fingers get fired up and he tweets away”.
Meanwhile, another Morning Joe guest, Huffington Post Senior Politics Editor Sam Stein, struck to the heart of the matter when he asked Palmeri, “Did aides concede that this is totally crazy? That they’re managing the president of the United States as if he was an impetuous child, spoon-feeding him good information, making him not feel alone?…This is objectively bizarre.”
“This is extreme management,” Palmeri acknowledged. “Trump doesn’t understand press strategy.”
Morning Joe airs weekdays at 6am on MSNBC.