US president Donald Trump’s communications staffers have often privately said that they can’t control his tweeting, but their inability to do so now seems to put him in jeopardy of legal action, and is making his rocky presidency even more unstable.
This morning, he went on Twitter and let loose a barrage of tweets from his personal account that, even for Trump, seemed to signal a new level of ill-considered vitriol.
It started at 7:59am, when he excused the White House press office for lying on his behalf.
This was followed eight minutes later with a tweet threatening to shut down the regular press briefings.
Then came one at 8:26am that appeared to threaten just-fired FBI director James Comey, whom Trump had reportedly asked to pledge his “loyalty.”
The last one could be considered witness intimidation, legal scholars say, because Comey is likely to testify in ongoing House and Senate investigations about this conversations with Trump.
Just as Trump was tweeting, in an accidental, yet perfectly timed commentary on how out of control his communications strategy is, the comedian Melissa McCarthy was zooming through Manhattan dressed as White House press secretary Sean Spicer, ahead of her hosting duties tomorrow evening on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.