This week in TrumpLand, a curious letter reportedly arrived on the US President’s desk, demanding he stop breaking the rules with his constant tweeting.
Confused? Let’s backtrack.
Donald Trump, the avid Twitter enthusiast he is, may be a fan of sharing wild 140-character messages with his tens of millions of fans, but it appears he is not so keen on ye olde spell check.
While one could reasonably think his proliferation of fake news could justify an investigation, it was Trump’s tendency to delete official typo-laden tweets that apparently landed him in hot water with the White House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
According to The Huffington Post, a warning letter that explained deleting tweets is against the Presidential Records Act was signed by Rep Jason Chaffetz and Rep. Elijah Cummings. The Act, which assures the public access to President Trump’s official business, prohibits the deletion of public statements without archiving them.
Notably, when President Obama’s administration was in power, a system was activated to auto-archive his tweets to avoid this very issue.
A further issue is that President Trump uses two Twitter accounts: his official White House account @POTUS, and the account he used long before the inauguration, @realDonaldTrump.
A third sore point is that personal emails have been used to communicate within the White House – something that reportedly prompted the committee to request staffers receive proper training on archival rules and email conduct.
So, why should we care?
In a time when the mainstream media and its news are being attacked, transparency is crucial. Information is crucial. Records are crucial.
While a typo here and there might not point to anything sinister, a bending of the rules can open the floodgates for a flurry of misconduct in the future.
Disappearing information doesn’t just create an air of mystery, it feeds into a dangerous culture of secrecy.
And when it comes to Donald Trump?
I’m not sure we can risk that.
Top Comments
Why not do a similar story on Hillary Clinton. She had a different server.
Because it happened ages ago, it's already been covered extensively in the media and she's not the president of the USA.
umm maybe because she is not POTUS
I would have thought the answer was breathtakingly obvious: because he's the President of the United States and she's not.
Secretary of State is still a rather prestigious appointment in the US and does not deserve to be glossed over like this.
Was there an article on this site talking about the illegality / corruption / danger of Hillary deleting thousands of emails while in office?
Genuine question... not saying there wasn't, just made me wonder reading this article.
I'm surprised tweets are considered an official record, but if it makes trump stop tweeting so much rubbish then that'll be good.
The tweets were publicly made and are going to be out there forever, even if they have been deleted. The tens of thousands of deleted emails on a private server were never public in the first place. There is a huge distinction between the two which seems to escape the authors attention.
As always, I have to add the disclaimer, I did not like either Trump or Clinton as candidates but articles like force me to point out the obvious bias.
The real question is why is Donald Trump tweeting from his own private account @realDonaldTrump and not @POTUS the official Presients account.
The pundits on here don't get it. And just one more reason why The Donald got in.
Hahahaha
Did u actually understand why Hillary deleting her emails was such a problem?? It had nothing to do with the emails being public or not!!!