Few articles here upset readers more than the ones saying President Donald Trump should delete or suspend his Twitter account.
Readers and social media users (there’s a difference: The latter almost never read past the headline) usually respond to such suggestions with variations of, “Delete your account!”
Really, though, why are they so committed to defending the president’s tweets when his 140-character notes seem so often to undermine his own agenda? The president’s half-cocked social media musings have caused his staff months of headaches, and even people close to his inner circle are now commenting publicly on how the president’s tweets have an undermining effect on the White House.
Consider, for example, that George Conway, husband to top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, said Monday that the president’s tweets are hurting the White House’s legislative efforts.
The president tweeted early Monday morning in reference to his executive order temporarily banning immigration from six middle eastern countries, “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to [the Supreme Court].”
The president’s executive order has gone through two variations now as it has been met with fierce legal pushback.
Conway, for his part, saw the commander in chief’s remarks as doing more harm than good to the White House’s efforts to see the travel order implemented.
“These tweets may make some [people] feel better, but they certainly won’t help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad,” Conway tweeted.
His remarks came not too long after his wife, Kellyanne, griped on national television that the press is paying too much attention to everything the president says on social media.
George Conway continued tweeting on the issue later Monday afternoon.
“Just to be clear, and in response to inquiries, I still VERY, VERY STRONGLY support POTUS, his Admin, policies, the executive order and of course, my wonderful wife,” he wrote. “Which is why I said what I said this morning. Every sensible lawyer in WHCO and every political appointee at DOJ [would] agree with me (as some have already told me).”
He concluded, “The [point] cannot be stressed enough that tweets on legal matters seriously undermine Admin agenda and POTUS – and those who support him, as I do, need to reinforce that [point] and not be shy about it.”
Yes, we may incorporate @realDonaldTrump‘s tweets about the ban into our Supreme Court argument.
— ACLU (@ACLU) June 5, 2017
The common argument in favor of the president’s Twitter account is that it allows him to speak directly to his base. There are other ways for him to do this that don’t also open up the 70-year-old motor-mouth from Queens, N.Y., to a possible court loss or legislative defeat.
There are ways for Trump to speak to voters that don’t also pull fans and critics into endless fights, while creating communications crises for top White House staffers, including press secretary Sean Spicer and Conway.
Then there’s the question of national security.
White House staffers have been bewildered and overwhelmed since January with the task of defending their boss’ unscripted and unpredictable social media rants. In fact, to this day the administration is still struggling to find a coherent response to the president’s claim on March 4 that former President Obama had Trump Tower’s “wires tapped” during the 2016 election.
Sure, there may be some members of the base who like it when the president randomly shoots off a tweet commenting on the news, but the benefits of Trump deleting or suspending his account far, far, far outweigh the cost of him keeping it.
