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Trump Staff's Strategy To Stop His Tweeting Makes Him Sound Like A Little Kid

by Alexandra Svokos
REUTERS

It's a question many have asked, but few have answered: Why can't they just take Donald Trump's phone away from him already?

Trump's Twitter account has been enraging people across the world for years now, as Chrissy Teigen can attest.

He tweets things that are generally considered "Broooo, why are you doing this?" on topics ranging from a former Miss Universe to fake news.

To make it even worse, he sleeps weird, short hours, so by the time America wakes up, it's often to another "OMG, what?" tweet from the president.

Somehow, even in the White House, he's still tweeting away from his personal Twitter account.

Trump's former campaign staff has some advice for his White House staff to keep him off Twitter.

And it involves, simply enough, enforced ignorance.

The staff noticed Trump mostly tweeted when he was mad about media coverage.

So instead of showing him all the media coverage, they would make sure he only saw the stuff about him that was positive.

The logic is if he isn't mad, he won't tweet.

Sam Nunberg, former communications director, said,

If candidate Trump was upset about unfair coverage, it was productive to show him that he was getting fair coverage from outlets that were persuadable.

So like, if they needed some extra smiley stuff for touchy Trump, they'd get some channel to make it up, apparently.

Nunberg said,

The same media that our base digests and prefers is going to be the base for his support. I would assume the president would like to see positive and preferential treatment from those outlets and that would help the operation overall.

This strategy was easier to employ because Trump mostly just reads print news, not online news.

So the staffers could just bring only the pretty stuff to his desk.

But then, of course, we all know Trump has a cable TV addiction... and that's where problems continue to emerge.

Politico writes,

Leaving him alone for several hours can prove damaging because he consumes too much television and gripes to people outside the White House.

During the campaign, the staffers would get some positive-seeming news out about Trump, like a meeting with someone, and then would blast the news as much as they could.

Former Communications Director Jason Miller said,

He sends out these tweets when he feels like people aren't responding enough for him.

So they all had to make sure they were tweeting up a storm and getting media outlets to promote the news.

Former staffers also said in person, it was helpful to just keep being extra praiseworthy while talking to Trump to get him to actually listen.

Got that, folks? Just shout adulations and maybe the president won't wreck your sleep schedule with ridiculous tweets.

Citations: How Trump's campaign staffers tried to keep him off Twitter (Politico)