Moscow sees Trump tweets as official statements – Kremlin
All tweets from the official account of US President Donald Trump are reported to Vladimir Putin as official political statements, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has told reporters.
“I don’t see myself as having the right to comment on the actions of the US president, but in any case, everything that is being posted on Donald Trump’s official Twitter account is perceived in Moscow as official statements of the president of the United States and is reported to President Putin along with statements of leaders of other nations of the world,” Peskov told the press on Tuesday.
Deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration added that President Putin did not have a personal Twitter account, had no desire to set one up, and considered it wrong to charge someone else with this task.
The comments followed a recent report in the New York Times which alleged that Trump was excessively absorbed with television and social media. In particular, the newspaper reported that the US president dedicated a significant amount of time to maintaining his personal Twitter account and sometimes started tweeting before 6am while still in bed.
After the NYT had released the story, Trump described it as “false” – in the form of a tweet.
In late November, Trump criticized UK Prime Minister Theresa May over her statements on anti-Muslim materials that he had retweeted. Twitter users quickly noticed that Trump had used the wrong @theresamay handle in his tweet, addressing a woman called Theresa Scrivener. A few minutes after the post, Trump deleted it and reposted the tweet using the correct hashtag “@Theresa_May.”
