The First Extremely Online President

William Barr's kayfabe denunciation of Trump's tweets is the latest installment in a genre: the Trump supporter who says, "I wish he'd quit tweeting." They don't object to what Trump does, they just wish he wouldn't shoot his mouth off about it on Twitter all the time.

But Trump and his spokesmen take a very different view. They regard Trump's tweeting as having a much more substantial and central role in his presidency. As White House press flack Stephanie Grisham puts it, "President Trump uses social media very effectively to fight for the American people against injustices in our country." We can take this as an admission that the president sees being a Twitter troll as one of his core responsibilities and as the primary way he "fights" for the people.

In this view, saying outrageous things on Twitter is not a distraction from the important things Trump is doing. It is the important thing he's doing.

But what if it isn't?

Read the rest at The Bulwark.