Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Trump as Stalin

On the evening of July 10, 2017 staffers at the U.S. embassy in Brussels—the official office for the ambassador to the European Union—received an unusual call from the seventh floor of the State Department back in Washington. The office of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was irate. Someone in Brussels with access to the mission’s Twitter account had liked the wrong tweet. It had set off alarm bells in Foggy Bottom.

[...]

It was one written by Chelsea Clinton and directed at President Donald Trump in a public spat that took the internet by storm.

That week in July, Trump drew criticism for his decision to let his daughter Ivanka fill his seat at the G20 meeting of top economic powers in Hamburg, Germany. After days of the pile on, Trump took to Twitter the morning of July 10 to claim his decision to have Ivanka represent the U.S. at the G20 was “very standard” and that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany agreed. Not more than 15 minutes later, he switched his tenor and began attacking Clinton and the press. “If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!,” Trump said.

  Daily Beast
I'm sure he didn't realize he was in essence saying that HE was giving away the country, but Chelsea Clinton saw it.
Clinton shot back: “It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not.”

That tweet garnered more than half a million likes, including by the account for the U.S. mission to the European Union. That kickstarted a weeks-long investigation, prompted by the secretary’s office, into who exactly at the Brussels mission had access to the Twitter account and hit “Like” on Clinton’s tweet, according to two former U.S. officials.

[...]

[P]eople were interviewed about whether they, as administrators of the account, had mistakenly or deliberately pressed the “Like” button. All of them denied any wrongdoing, those sources said. One individual familiar with the exchanges said the Secretary of State’s top managers in Washington “wanted blood” and called Brussels numerous times demanding the name of the culprit.

U.S. officials in Belgium were never able to give Tillerson’s office a name and soon after, the embassy restructured the Twitter account and limited access to just two individuals.

The concern from the secretary’s office over social media messaging continued after Tillerson into the era of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to two U.S. officials at American embassies overseas.

[...]

[O]fficials are wary of promoting social-media posts that might seem to undermine the desires of the president, according to multiple former and current administration officials. They fear the posts will be quickly undercut, if not directly rebuffed, by a single, angry tweet from President Trump’s personal account.

[...]

It is unclear if Trump—who is famously thin-skinned about criticism or even mean tweets from prominent critics—himself was aware of this intra-administration kerfuffle over the Clinton tweet, but some of his lieutenants certainly were.
I would venture to say it's highly likely that Trump was not only aware of it, but gave the command to find out who "liked" Clinton's tweet.

Don't think this will stay within the Trump admininstration.  If Trump is reelected, it's coming to you.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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