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White House aides say media ‘obsessed’ with Trump tweets, claim social media isn’t policy – Metro US

White House aides say media ‘obsessed’ with Trump tweets, claim social media isn’t policy

Donald Trump with his arms out

White House aides are scrambling to peddle back a series of early morning tweets by President Donald Trump

Adviser to the president Kellyanne Conway and Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, both hit the airwaves Monday morning to chastise the media for its coverage of Trump’s Twitter messages, saying the media shouldn’t consider Trump’s tweets as policy.

On CNN, Gorka said he finds it really disappointing to hear mainstream media “obsess” about Trump’s tweets. In a series of four tweets just after 3 a.m. Monday, Trump discussed the need for his travel ban on several majority Muslim nations in the wake of the Manchester and London terror attacks.

In his first tweet at 3:25 a.m., Trump said, “People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!”

The administration has long held back the notion that Trump’s executive order restricting travel was a ban on Muslims.

“He said what we have believed all along and you guys have denied, which this is a ban. And he put his arms around the original order which obviously targeted Muslim populations, which is a fine political argument to make and let people judge it,” CNN host Chris Cuomo sais in an interview with Gorka.

“One hundred characters is not policy. It’s social media. You know the difference, right?” Gorka said.

Gorka added, “Let’s talk about policy. I’d like to talk about policy, not tweets.”

“It’s his words, his thoughts,” Cuomo shot back. “What are you saying, we shouldn’t listen to what the president says?”

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway echoed Gorka’s position in an interview Monday morning on the “Today Show.”

“This obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president,” Conway complained.

“Today” host Craig Melvin said the president has established that he uses Twitter as a mechanism to bypass what he calls the “dishonest media.”

“That’s his preferred method of communication with the American people. He hasn’t given an interview in three weeks, so lately it has been his preferred method.”