It’d be in everyone’s favor if someone close to President Trump broke him of his awful Twitter habit.
It’d benefit not just his supporters, but also his White House staff, who are called on constantly to interpret his impulsive live tweeting of cable news (sometimes with extremely embarrassing results). It’d also benefit the country in general if its top elected official weren’t broadcasting to other countries his every thought and reaction.
There’s reasoning behind this. Let former Cold Warrior, Naval War College professor and Kremlinologist Tom Nichols‏ explain:
“I was a Sovietologist back in the day. I was constantly trying to unpack what I thought was happening behind the Kremlin’s walls,” he said this week on social media. “I would have given anything for Andropov or Gorbachev to give me a running narrative of their mood and inner thoughts in real time. As an analyst, including my time years ago as a CIA consultant doing research in the 80s, I’d have considered that a gold mine.”
He added, “And I wonder if, and or how, anyone is considering the fact that this is basically a raw feed of POTUS thoughts to foreign analysts. Because while none of the matters are classified – at least [as far as I know] – tweets are pieces of the president’s moods and thoughts that day.”
Nichols explained he started thinking seriously about the national security implications of the president’s unfiltered Twitter feed this week after Trump criticized former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, whom he fired in January, hours before she was set to testify before Congress on Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump tweeted, “Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.”
Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017
For Nichols, the president offering direct access to his way of thinking could be a seriously liability.
“This is the kind of instant leadership portrait that I wouldn’t want a foreign nation to have when gaming out a crisis with us. Americans might well appreciate the candor. But I thought Obama did too much thinking out loud in front of cameras. This is far more,” he wrote. “It is, from a foreign intel analyst’s viewpoint, in some ways probably more valuable than classified memos. It’s real and instant.”
“It shows how the President reacts under stress. It’s something you never want the enemy to know. And yet it’s all out there, every day,” he added. “It’s also a window into how the President processes information — or how he doesn’t process info he doesn’t like. Solid gold info.”
These are all things I would have given anything to know, even just a fraction of this, in an analysis of any Soviet or Russia leader. It’s not for me to tell the President how to communicate. But I find something hugely dangerous in revealing real-time POTUS reactions.”
Trump would be doing his entire staff a huge favor if he deleted his account, or at least stopped tweeting. Sean Spicer would no longer have to debase himself daily in front of a national audience, and White House adviser KellyAnne Conway would also likely catch a break.
If not for his staff, the president should at least delete his account for the sake of national security. Come on. Do it for your country.
