In a characteristically misguided and confused tweet, Trump took to Twitter today to both decry the existence of leaks coming out of the White House and then, in the same breath, vowed action against the “traitorous” and “cowardly” leakers whose existence he just finished putting into question.
The tweet comes on the heels of the latest leak out of the White House, in which staffer Kelly Sadler attempted to minimize Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) opposition to Trump’s CIA pick Gina Haspel by claiming that he is “dying anyway.” The callous statement has caused a PR nightmare for the Trump administration.
The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018
The bizarre tweet is obviously an attempt to pander to his base in both respects. The Trump White House is effectively predicated on its opposition to the “Fake News Media,” a fallacy that is necessary to combat the endless stream of stories obviously critical of the goings on in the administration. Rather than hold themselves accountable, the White House has opted to simply level a blanket attack on all press.
Not stopping there, Trump further reverted to his strong man tactics, not only attacking the leakers whose existence is a “massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make [them] look as bad as possible,” but vowing to find out who they are.
The tweet, then, is not only misguided, but self-contradictory. Of course, the bar has never been set especially high for Trump’s “official statements” put out via Twitter, rife with grammatical errors, misspellings, factual inaccuracies, and often a regurgitation of whatever Trump was just “instructed” to write by his handlers at Fox & Friends.
