With just days to go until Election Day, Donald Trump’s aides are doing everything they can to keep him on message—including revoking access to his own Twitter account.
According to a report in The New York Times, Trump is no longer solely in control of what’s tweeted from his account. Aides are now sending out messages with his help.
For the next week, his campaign staff deployed a series of creative tricks to protect its boss from his most self-destructive impulses.
Several advisers warned him that he risked becoming like a wild animal chasing its prey so zealously that it raced over a cliff — a reminder that he could pursue his grievances and his eagerness to fling insults, but that the cost would be a plunge into an electoral abyss.
Taking away Twitter turned out to be an essential move by his press team, which deprived him of a previously unfiltered channel for his aggressions.
On Thursday, as his plane idled on the tarmac in Miami, Mr. Trump spottedAir Force One outside his window. As he glowered at the larger plane, he told Ms. Hicks, his spokeswoman, to jot down a proposed tweet about President Obama, who was campaigning nearby for Mrs. Clinton.
“Why is he campaigning instead of creating jobs and fixing Obamacare?” Mr. Trump said. “Get back to work.” After some light editing — Ms. Hicks added “for the American people” at the end — she published it.
Keeping Trump on message even on social media appears to be working. Trump’s twitter feed is now full of benign messages about his rallies and retweets of articles—a departure from the all too common series of tweets bashing his rivals or the 3am “tweetstorms” attacking former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, for example.
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