A Close Reading of Trump’s Friday Tweetstorm
The first presidential tweets on Friday morning landed nearly an hour before dawn on the East Coast, and they were a doozy—even for Donald Trump.
In the span of five lengthy (for Twitter) posts, the president unleashed a series of charges, complaints, and conspiracy theories aimed at undercutting a forthcoming report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller and directing the nation’s attention, once again, back toward the opponent he defeated two years ago.
Embedded within was a familiar cast of characters (Mueller, James Comey, the Clintons) along with a new face (Andrew Weissmann, a prosecutor on Mueller’s team); an attack on Trump’s current deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein; at least one lie (that Trump did not know Jerome Corsi); a misspelling ( when it should be ); and the introduction of a surprising new story
