Trump's staff fears Twitter will be his undoing, report says

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

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The president is an energetic man.

Well, his fingers certainly are.

Before many have opened their eyes, Donald Trump has opened his phone and emitted his thoughts of the day on Twitter.

They can, at times, be rabid, hurtful, critical, defensive, haughty, nasty and laudatory of himself. Sometimes, it's a mixture of two or more of these.

Now The New York Times reports that members of his staff are desperate for him to slow down with the tweets, as they believe his Twitter posts could have dire consequences.

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

It's all part of a general pleading for Trump to slow the pace of his actions, the Times says.

There's been no time to set a strategy and execute it, as the president regularly leaps to Twitter to vent. On Thursday, for example, he tweeted that both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had been involved in "illegal acts" and that he, Donald Trump, was the subject of a "witch hunt."

Which, one might imagine, left his staff tearing up plans for the day and hunting for appropriate reactions to inevitable press questions.

Ominously, though, the Times adds that White House officials, current and former, fear that Twitter will be Trump's undoing.

His staff aren't the only ones who wish he'd succumb to a Twitterpause. On Friday, The Washington Post reported that former presidential candidate Jeb Bush told the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference in Las Vegas, "I don't [think] the president should tweet."

Bush added: "When he tweets he also gives our enemies all sorts of nuances and insights. These things matter. We are living in a dangerous world. He is the leader of the free world."

Trump is also, however, something of a free-tweeter. It seems Twitter lets him free associate in a manner no president has done before. His core followers surely enjoy it. He seems to believe he can send the news cycle into a different direction with just one tweet.

I fancy, then, that no member of his staff will manage to persuade Trump to suddenly not be Trump. And a core part of being Trump is being the fastest Twitterer in the west.

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