Control over Donald Trump’s Twitter account was unclear last night amid G7 chaos

| 1:13 pm EDT June 10, 2018
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Who has control over Donald Trump’s Twitter account? That’s been a long running question. Palmer Report has identified various instances over the past year in which Trump’s tweets very much appeared to have been written by his staffers, and in one instance we caught Sarah Huckabee Sanders ghost-tweeting for him red handed. Last night things came to a head when two tweets with a vaguely similar message, but clearly written by two different people, appeared on his account in rapid fashion.

At 7:03pm EST last night, Donald Trump’s Twitter account posted this: “Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!” This tweet was certainly consistent with Trump’s use of hyperbolic words like “massive” and his pattern of randomly capitalizing common nouns. It stood out as bizarre that he referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by his first name, leading Palmer Report to quip that he must not have known how to spell “Trudeau.”

Just two minutes later, Trump’s Twitter account posted this: “PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!” There are few problems here. The first is that when Trump is in the midst of a Twitter rampage, it nearly always takes him seven minutes or more to type out the next tweet. The second is that the style and verbiage of the second tweet doesn’t match with the first.

It’s almost a certainty that these two tweets were written by two different people. Considering the overlap, it’s doubtful that either person knew the other person’s tweet was coming. So either Donald Trump and one of his staffers were each crafting foreign policy on Twitter last night without each other’s knowledge, or Trump wasn’t even involved, and two of his staffers were each doing so. Something is off here. Who has control of the official Twitter account for the “President” of the United States?