White House chief of staff John Kelly has said he doesn’t follow President Trump’s tweets.
White House chief of staff John Kelly has said he doesn't follow President Trump's tweets.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the retired general told reporters in Vietnam Sunday, "Someone, I read the other day, said we all just react to the tweets. We don't. I don't. I don't allow the staff to. We know what we're doing."
"Believe it or not, I do not follow the tweets. I find out about them. But for our purposes, my purpose, is we make sure the president is briefed up on what he's about to do," Kelly reportedly added.
His comment follows a somewhat controversial post by the president.
"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,' when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?' Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!" Trump wrote in a tweet on Saturday.
The president is known for tweeting prolifically and using the platform to express his grievances at the time, for example against North Korea, Puerto Rican officials in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and even his own secretary of state.
Despite pressures to cut back on posting such messages, Trump has defended the habit.
"The FAKE MSM [mainstream media] is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out," he wrote in June.
But according to a Quinnipiac University's poll from September, more than two-thirds--or 69 percent--of Americans say that Trump "should stop tweeting from his personal account."
