Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Trump's Twitter Trantrums

Rich Galen

Monday October 9, 2017

Twitter

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In the past 30 days, since September 8, Donald Trump has Tweeted - well, guess how many times.
While you're pondering this, consider clicking on the Subscription Drive link.
Ok. Got your number?
Here's the answer: 313
That's as of 4 pm Sunday afternoon as I am writing this. If Trump gets cranky about Rex Tillerson, or Jeff Sessions, or John Kelly, or any other senior administration official; or Senators Bob Corker or John McCain, or any other U.S. Senator; or Kim Jong un, or any other leader of any other country; that number will grow.
Also, those 313 Tweets were from Trump's @RealDonaldTrump account. If you add in activity from his @POTUS (President Of The United States) account you have to add an additional 201 Twitter transactions for a total of 514.
Most of the @POTUS activity were re-Tweets of his @ReadDonaldTrump Tweets, so that might be something a junior staffer is tasked with doing and so may not take much of Trump's valuable time.
Twitter has only allowed messages of 140 characters or less. EVERYTHING counts as a character including spaces, so you have to be spare in your typing.
Recently, Twitter has begun to experiment - by granting this to certain accounts - doubling the character limit.
@RealDonaldTrump does not appear to be one of the accounts chosen.
I am making this up, but it would not surprise me to find out that White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly (@RealJohnFKelly) rang up the executive chairman of Twitter, Omid Kordestani (@omidkordestani) and said something like: "If you double @RealDonaldTrump's limit to 280 characters, the FBI will investigate every parking ticket you've ever received."
As an example. Trump decided that Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) was being unfaithful when he ignored a Trumpian plea to reconsider his announcement, last month, that he would not run for re-election to the Senate.
Trump's Twitter storm which began at 10 AM Sunday morning:
09:57: Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without�
10:09...my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said "NO THANKS." He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!
10:13...Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn't have the guts to run!
According to Microsoft Word, that (not counting the time codes) took 411 characters.
Thus, (or "hence," to channel our President) he could have done that in two Tweets, instead of spending valuable time constructing three.
For his part, Sen. Corker responded via Twitter at 11:13:
It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.
The cause of this, according to a report by CNN.com was a statement in August by Corker in Tennessee that:
"Trump had not yet demonstrated 'the stability nor some of the competence' he needed to be successful."
And, in case anyone missed the point, Corker added last week that:
"[Secretary of State] Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly 'help separate our country from chaos.'"
These are the kinds of statements that tend to attract Donald Trump's attention and cause him to seethe.
According to Corker's chief of staff (again, via CNN.com):
"The president called Senator Corker on Monday afternoon and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek reelection and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times."
This translated in Trump's mind as Corker having begged Trump for an endorsement.
Trump is already cranky due to the report last week that Rex Tillerson had said last summer of Trump at a Pentagon meeting that Trump was a "moron."
As you probably know, there was an adjective beginning with the letter "f" ahead of "moron" but it is likely it was the "moron" part, not the "f" bomb that most upset Trump.
Trump better be making really good friends with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer because he's piling up Republican enemies in the U.S. Senate.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to the Subscription Drive and to the webpage showing every one of Trump's Tweets and to the CNN report on the Trump/Corker dust-up.
The Mullfoto is a vintage Humvee in Old Town last weekend.

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