Donald Trump’s social media director goes off the deep end
Believe it or not, Donald Trump has a social media director. Trump usually just fires off idiotic and poorly written tweets of his own accord, and clearly doesn’t bother to run it past anyone first. But there is a guy who posts the transactional and promotional tweets to Trump’s accounts. His name is Dan Scavino. His name suddenly keeps getting tossed around in relation to the Trump-Russia scandal. And now he’s going off the deep end on Twitter himself.
It all began five days ago when Walter Shaub, the former Director of US Office of Gov’t Ethics, called out various Trump administration members for violating the Hatch Act. This prompted Dan Scavino to take a surreal and unprofessional cheap shot at Shaub: “Obama’s head of Office of Government Ethics continues to taunt and threaten Trump Administration via Twitter by filing OSC complaints to the office he once oversaw.” He added the word “CLOWN” in all caps, along with an emoji of a clown. That’s right, the guy who’s supposed be Trump’s social media chaperone is now reduced to tweeting clown emojis at people.
Shaub promptly fired back at Scavino: “I don’t know whether to be startled by a govt official using an official account to call a citizen names, amused he thinks OGE & OSC are the same agency, flattered I’m in the head of a guy OSC told to stop violating the Hatch Act, or worried by his contempt for the rule of law.”
Over the past two weeks, Dan Scavino’s name has surfaced multiple times in relation to the Trump-Russia scandal. First, Kellyanne Conway claimed that Scavino was involved in the posting of the self-incriminating tweet that Donald Trump claims was written by his attorney (link). Then CNN reported that Rob Goldstone, who helped put together Donald Trump Jr’s Russia meeting, kept communicating about it with Scavino after the fact. Now that Trump’s own people seem to be trying to scapegoat Scavino, it may help explain why Scavino has become so rattled on Twitter.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report