Explaining Trump: How the White House cleans up after a tweetstorm

[Carmen Elsa Irarragorri Wyland]

Donald Trump entered public life on the strength of the lie that Barack Obama was born outside the United States and ineligible to be president, and even after disavowing it at the last possible moment of his presidential campaign, Trump has continued to say things for which — to put it as generously as possible — there is no discernible evidence.

As a private citizen, he was rarely held to account for anything he said, and on Twitter — which by its nature doesn’t lend itself to nuance or elaboration — he could drop bombshells as he saw fit and move on. But now, as president, he is at least in principle responsible for what he tells the American people. And he has an entire staff of White House assistants, counselors and spokespeople to defend, justify and explain away his misstatements, attack the credibility of his critics and deflect additional questions.

There’s nothing necessarily novel about this. It was Richard Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, who took back a year of lies about the Watergate burglary with the airy remark, “This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.” But for the Trump White House, defending the president’s claims has required some particularly advanced rhetorical gymnastics.

The difficulty for the administration officials begins with the fact that the president bases his messaging as much around what he’s watching on cable news as he does on any sort of strategy or policy briefing. The White House didn’t even have a communications director — whose job is to coordinate the administration’s messaging — until nearly a month after the inauguration. In the administration’s rocky first few weeks, that role was filled by press secretary Sean Spicer, whose performance reportedly displeased Trump early on.

One of Spicer’s favorite fallback when challenged is a variation of, “The president’s tweet speaks for itself,” as if the 140-character firebombs dispatched in response to “Fox and Friends” segments or Breitbart stories require no further context. He’s also leaning on more traditional Washington tactics, such as simply refusing to answer a question, such as this example when asked about whether the president would apologize to Heidi Cruz during a White House dinner.

[Zephonith Serpent Woman]