At Tuesday’s White House press briefing, Sean Spicer finally shed some light on what the hell America is supposed to do with President Trump’s tweets, telling reporters:
“The president is the president of the United States, so they’re considered official statements by the president of the United States.”
Videos by VICE
The question of whether or not Americans should read Trump’s tweets as “official White House statements” has become a divisive issue among some of his closest advisers. The confusion escalated after the president misquoted and attacked the mayor of London and seemed to take credit for the diplomatic situation involving Qatar—among other confusing tweets.
On Monday, senior White House national security official Sebastian Gorka told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Trump’s tweets were “not policy.”
“It’s not policy. It’s social media, Chris,” Gorka said. “It’s social media. You know the difference, right?”
That same day, top White House aide Kellyanne Conway denounced journalists’ “obsession with covering everything [Trump] says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president” on the Today show. She went on to deny that tweeting is the president’s number-one method for communicating with his citizens.
So why the sudden reversal? Spicer’s known for getting confused about everything from what actually occurred during the Holocaust to whether or not Frederick Douglass is still alive. Maybe the press secretary stumbled across @RealPressSecBot—the new Twitter bot that publishes Trump’s tweets on what looks like official White House stock—and figured he just missed a memo.
In any case, if the American people go off of what Spicer says, then apparently even late-night blunders like “covfefe” deserve the same treatment as official White House policy announcements.
Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.
