CARLSON: So, 51,000 people retweeted that. So a lot of people thought that was plausible, they believe you, you’re the President — you’re in charge of the agencies. Every intelligence agency reports to you. Why not immediately go to them and gather evidence to support that?
TRUMP: Because I don’t want to do anything that’s going to violate any strength of an agency. We have enough problems.
And by the way, with the CIA, I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked, and a lot of things taken — that was during the Obama years. That was not during us. That was during the Obama situation. Mike Pompeo is there now doing a fantastic job.
.. I don’t honestly understand how or why pushing for that investigation would “violate any strength of an agency.”
It doesn’t. The one and only think Trump does well is turn a conversation into spaghetti so that by the time you get to the end of an answer, you’re not even sure what the question was.
.. if you watched the Bret Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word wiretap, you would feel very confident that you could mention the name.
.. So: Bret Baier mentioned the word “wiretap.” That gave Trump the confidence that he could tweet that he was wire-tapped by the former president.
.. You had great press all week, bipartisan, and then you let off this tweet, and immediately, people say —
TRUMP: No, it wasn’t that tweet. They had other things —
CARLSON: You can’t back up what you say.
TRUMP: Excuse me. I had a very successful night. Joint session, it was very successful. I got reviews even from people that I would never think I was going to get good reviews. I got great reviews.
.. I have my own form of media.
.. I mean, let’s see whether or not I prove it. I just don’t choose to do it right now. I choose to do it before the committee, and maybe I’ll do it before the committee. Maybe I’ll do it before I see the result of the committee. But I think we have some very good stuff.
.. if they’re not going to do me the honor and the public the honor of spreading my word accurately as it was meant
.. No matter what you do, no matter how good — no matter how great it is, they don’t report it in a positive fashion.
,, I probably wouldn’t be here — I’m not talking about Twitter, because it’s really Twitter, Facebook, and lots of other things, OK. But I might not be here talking to you right now as President if I didn’t have an honest way of getting the word out.
Donald Trump: ‘I Wouldn’t Be Here If It Wasn’t For Twitter’
Appearing in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, President Donald Trump said he would not be where he was if it wasn’t for his ability to speak directly to Americans through Twitter.
“Well, let me tell you about Twitter,” Trump said to Carlson. “I think that maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter, because I get such a fake press, such a dishonest press.”
What is @realDonaldTrump up to on Twitter?
The American president believes that parts of the media are his enemy and wants to speak directly to voters. So he finds a way to communicate with them in a style that is utterly his own. The nation is captivated, even as a handful of critics warn of a slide toward demagoguery.
That president is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in 1933 began using homespun radio broadcasts – dubbed “fireside chats” – to forge a new connection with Americans.
Now, nearly a century later, another president is using a different technology to similar ends.
Mr. Trump’s tweets – which are amplified by the mainstream media – perform multiple functions.
- They help form a bond with his supporters, who relish his feed as an unfettered glimpse into his thinking.
- They can serve to change the national conversation from topic to another.
- And they provide an instant way to fulfill Mr. Trump’s craving for attention, his biographers say.
.. The fact that the tweets don’t sound like any other prior form of presidential communication is part of their power. “Up to this point, presidents had a private self and a public self and we’ve never known if they’re the same,” said Prof. Jamieson. But it’s reasonable to infer that “what we see on Twitter is actually who Donald Trump is.”
.. Some experts see calculation rather than stream-of-consciousness in Mr. Trump’s Twitter account. George Lakoff, a cognitive scientist at the University of California Berkeley, has written that Mr. Trump’s tweets serve four strategic purposes:
- to divert attention from continuing controversies,
- to float political trial balloons,
- to frame ideas in advantageous ways and
- to deflect criticism by blaming the messenger (usually the news media).
.. the former president made sparing use of the fireside chats to maintain their impact. “Even if you are president of the United States, people will ultimately discount what you say, but it will take a long time.”
Rep. Steve King Draws Rebukes for Immigrant ‘Babies’ Putdown
On Saturday, Mr. King tweeted praise of Geert Wilders, the anti-immigration leader of the Dutch Party of Freedom, running for prime minister, saying on Twitter, “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
.. He said many people who come to the country illegally refuse to “assimilate into the American culture and civilization.”
.. Mr. King said his comments weren’t related to race, but to culture. “It’s the culture, not the blood. If you could go anywhere in the world and adopt these little babies and put them into households that were already assimilated into America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby,” he told CNN.
.. In June 2014, he called former President Barack Obama “Kim Jong POTUS” for supporting canceling the patent for the Washington Redskins logo.
In July 2013, he criticized children brought to the country illegally by saying that “for everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
.. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office tied the comments to recent bomb threats at Jewish Community Centers and the Kansas shooting that targeted two Indian men and called for Speaker Paul Ryan to address the comments.
.. Ms. Pelosi’s spokesman Drew Hammill said. “The GOP Leadership must stop accommodating this garbage, and condemn Congressman Steve King’s statements in the strongest and most unequivocal terms.”
AshLee Strong, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman, said: “The speaker clearly disagrees and believes America’s long history of inclusiveness is one of its great strengths.”