Winning the Nov. 8, 2016 election tweeting away against his Republican and Democratic adversaries, 71-year-old Donald Trump has no intent of stopping the practice. Telling Trump to stop tweeting and attacking Republicans, Sen. John McCain (R-Az.) urged the president to refrain from his favorite pastime. “Stop tweeting,” McCain told NBC’s 77-year-old former nightly news anchor Tom Brokaw. “I think I would also say, ‘Look there’s no reason to attack Republicans,’” McCain said. “We’ve got enough people who attack them [Republicans],” pretending that he’s not been one of Trump’s worst critics. Since Trump reacted to McCain’s attacks during the 2016 campaign, saying McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was a POW for five-and-a-half years during the Vietnam War, McCain’s been on the warpath attacking the Trump at every opportunity.
Telling Trump to stop tweeting, McCain knows it likely falls on deaf ears. Even former New York U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara, who Trump routinely fired because of a new GOP administration, urged Trump to stop tweeting. With Special Counsel, 73-year-old former FBI Director now Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating Trump and his campaign staff, Bharara thinks about the legal trail of admissible evidence left by tweeting. Trump told Neil Cavuto on Fox Business Channel last month that he tweets to respond quickly to false statements made in the mainstream press. Trump admitted to Cavuto that he doesn’t think he’d be president were it not for social media, especially Twitter. Speaking in Chicago Nov. 1, former First Lady Michelle Obama urged the president to stop tweeting. “You don’t need to tweet every thought,” said Michelle, swiping at Trump.
Trump’s critics know that Trump has only one voice backing him in the media: Fox News. Even some Fox News hosts like Cavuto, Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith aren’t too kind to Trump. Trump’s general support inside the GOP remains weak at best, sometimes catching more flack from senators like McCain, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Flake (R-Az.) than Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) attacking Trump almost hourly. “Most of your initial thoughts aren’t worthy of the light of day,” said Michelle, ignoring the universal condemnation of Trump coming from the mainstream press. Tweeting allows Trump to respond to endless daily attacks hell-best on hounding him out of office. Since his former campaign manager Paul Manafort was indicted Oct. 30, the mainstream press can’t stop talking about Trump’s inevitable impeachment, despite finding no crimes.
Trump uses Twitter to communicate to his 41.7 million followers, much like he did during the 2016 campaign. Defining presidential as not tweeting, the press has criticized Trump for tweeting since Day 1. No one on the Democrat’s side has been more critical of Trump than Schumer. When 29-year-old Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] terrorist Uzbek Sayfullo Saipov struck New York City Nov. 1, killing 8, injuring 13, Trump blamed the Diversity Visa Lottery backed by Schumer. “A Chuck Schumer Beaurty,” Trump tweeted, promising to end the visa program that allowed Saipov to enter the country. “The president ought to stop tweeting and start leading, said Schumer, reacting to Trump’s criticism. “The American people long for leadership not diviviseness, not finger-pointing, not name-calling. This is a tragedy, it’s less than a day after it occurred and he can’t refrain from his nasty, divisive habits,” said Schumer.
Trump’s been consistently opposed to weak immigration policies, inviting potential terrorists into the United States. Deeply affected by the Dec. 2, 2015 San Bernardino and June 12, 2016 massacres, Trump tried to ban immigration from a number of Mideast and North African countries. Schumer doesn’t want Trump to remind him that his lax immigrations policies contributed to allowing terrorists like Saipov to enter the country. Democrats cheered when Seattle-based U.S. District Court Judge James Robart issued a stay Feb 3 to Trump’s travel ban. Schumer thought the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals June 12 upheld Robart’s injunction. Schumer wasn’t happy Sept. 11 when the Supreme Court upheld most of Trump’s travel ban. Trump’s point is that there are legitimate national security issues allowing immigration from terrorist-infested countries.
Trump won’t stop tweeting until the mainstream media gives him a fair shake. As long as the Democratic Party infiltrates the newsrooms of liberal broadcast and print outlets, Trump will continue to get the word out on Twitter. “When somebody says something about me, I am able to go bing, bing, bing, and I take care of it,” Trump told Cavuto. “The other way, I would never be able to get the word out,” telling what he calls the “fake media” that he’ll continue tweeting as long as the press gives one side of the story. With only certain hosts on Fox News giving Trump a fair shake, the public can expect Trump to confront the mainstream media with Twitter as long as they continue biased reporting. With the May 17 Harvard study showing 93% of mainstream media outlets report negatively on Trump, he won’t be giving up Twitter anytime soon, no matter who tells him to quit.
