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Calling Spin Doctors to Bail Out Trump Funny
Now Trump's own spin doctors are pleading with us to ignore his Twitter war with Sadiq Khan
The President's tweets look very different when ennobled by the seal of his office Credit: Oliver R Douliery/EPA
Defending Donald Trump's public utterances has never been easy. Early on, his handlers came up with a clever response to awkward questions: take the man "seriously but not literally", they said, emphasising the candidate's populist speak-from-the-heart credential.
Things are more difficult now their man is tweeting from the Oval Office. What do you do when the president comes across as a little less than presidential?
Better to stay out of it. "The tweet speaks for itself" has often been the response of choice. Except now even the tweets don't speak for themselves, apparently.
If they did, we would have to assume that it was the position of the American government that Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, was failing to deal adequately with the aftermath of Saturday's terrorist attack and had failed to recognise the ongoing threat, as Mr Trump said in a series of tweets.
Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
So Sebastian Gorka, the president's British attack dog, has developed a new strategy. "It's not policy, it's social media," was how he shrugged off Mr Trump's latest string of intemperate messages in which the president risked sabotaging his own travel ban in the courts by giving a little too much away.
In other words, don't take the words seriously – let alone literally.
Except they do matter when you are the commander in chief. The National Archives and Records Administration has already asked the White House to save all of Mr Trump's tweets, even the ones he deletes. These words will stick around.
People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
And we know that Republican strategists do actually take Mr Trump's tweets seriously. They offer tool for reaching ordinary American voters, they say, offering a view of the president's mind unfiltered by spin doctors.
What then are we to make of the tweeter-in-chief? Is there meaning in his messages? Or are they a neverending stream of distraction, fired at random in the hope that some stick?
A new tweetbot has a neat way of looking at them. @RealPressSecBot constantly scans Mr Trump's Twitter feed and automatically converts new messages into the format of a White House press release. The words look very different beneath a White House heading.
The bot's inventor, Russel Neiss, says the idea is to give the president's words the honour they deserve and, dare I say, the effect is presidential.
Which reminds me of an idea of my own for recording the presidential voice for posterity. Could we persuade one of those silken voiced Radio Four announcers – I'm thinking Corrie Corfield – to modulate their way through his timeline with the sort of monastic reverence reserved only for the Lord's Prayer and the Shipping Forecast?
I don't know whether it would be enough to teach Mr Trump the impact of his words. But I think there might be a Turner Prize in it.
Defending Donald Trump's public utterances has never been easy. Early on, his handlers came up with a clever response to awkward questions: take the man "seriously but not literally", they said, emphasising the candidate's populist speak-from-the-heart credential.
Things are more difficult now their man is tweeting from the Oval Office. What do you do when the president comes across as a little less than presidential?
Better to stay out of it. "The tweet speaks for itself" has often been the response of choice. Except now even the tweets don't speak for themselves, apparently.
If they did, we would have to assume that it was the position of the American government that Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, was failing to deal adequately with the aftermath of Saturday's terrorist attack and had failed to recognise the ongoing threat, as Mr Trump said in a series of tweets.
So Sebastian Gorka, the president's British attack dog, has developed a new strategy. "It's not policy, it's social media," was how he shrugged off Mr Trump's latest string of intemperate messages in which the president risked sabotaging his own travel ban in the courts by giving a little too much away.
In other words, don't take the words seriously – let alone literally.
Except they do matter when you are the commander in chief. The National Archives and Records Administration has already asked the White House to save all of Mr Trump's tweets, even the ones he deletes. These words will stick around.
And we know that Republican strategists do actually take Mr Trump's tweets seriously. They offer tool for reaching ordinary American voters, they say, offering a view of the president's mind unfiltered by spin doctors.
What then are we to make of the tweeter-in-chief? Is there meaning in his messages? Or are they a neverending stream of distraction, fired at random in the hope that some stick?
A new tweetbot has a neat way of looking at them. @RealPressSecBot constantly scans Mr Trump's Twitter feed and automatically converts new messages into the format of a White House press release. The words look very different beneath a White House heading.
The bot's inventor, Russel Neiss, says the idea is to give the president's words the honour they deserve and, dare I say, the effect is presidential.
Which reminds me of an idea of my own for recording the presidential voice for posterity. Could we persuade one of those silken voiced Radio Four announcers – I'm thinking Corrie Corfield – to modulate their way through his timeline with the sort of monastic reverence reserved only for the Lord's Prayer and the Shipping Forecast?
I don't know whether it would be enough to teach Mr Trump the impact of his words. But I think there might be a Turner Prize in it.