Do you ever see a Donald Trump tweet and wonder, What could he possibly be going on about now, and hope against all hopes maybe it’s part of some bigger plan you’ll understand one day? No—he’s not that smart. He’s just tweeting the chyrons he sees on Fox News.
Trump, who won’t take intelligence briefings because he’s a “smart person” and doesn’t need them, plagiarized the embattled “news” station twice this week—first on Tuesday morning, in a tweet about Chicago murder statistics, and again Thursday morning, in a tweet about Chelsea Manning.
In fact, most of the information the President of the United States is receiving appears to come directly from cable news and the three newspapers he professes to read each morning. Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that despite his new role as the leader of the free world, Trump is still able to get in several hours of television a day.
His mornings, he said, are spent as they were in Trump Tower. He rises before 6 a.m., watches television tuned to a cable channel first in the residence, and later in a small dining room in the West Wing, and looks through the morning newspapers: The New York Times, The New York Post and now The Washington Post.
But his meetings now begin at 9 a.m., earlier than they used to, which significantly curtails his television time. Still, Mr. Trump, who does not read books, is able to end his evenings with plenty of television.
On the one hand, this is so abjectly terrifying and so incredibly pathetic that it almost seems farcical and funny. On the other hand, it’s not.