"Honest John" Trump

There is no doubt that "Honest John" Trump IS the voice of America.

Everyone has a theory about Trump’s early morning tweets. Some think they are to distract the press from his administration’s weaknesses, or to frame the public debate. Others think his shifts from one topic to another indicate mental instability. I think BOTH distraction and instability are in play.

But Media Matters for America has convinced me the truth is simpler: The president is just live-tweeting Fox, particularly Fox & Friends.

The president likes to parrot what he sees on FAUX. We know Trump watches several hours each day.

The FAUX-Trump feedback loop is happening far more frequently than you first think. The strategy to Trump’s Twitter feed; Trump is being distracted by Trump.

For a man with unparalleled access to an intelligence community, funded at $73 billion last year, Trump prefers to rely on FAUX snews to misunderstand current events.

Sometimes Trump’s tweets don’t correspond to FAUX snews coverage—his boasting about the economy, being a case in point. Other times, they parrot FAUX. For example, Trump tweets about a guest who was just on Fox & Friends.

On his first morning back in Washington after an 11-day winter vacation, Trump generated five consecutive tweets based on FAUX. His tweet urging the imprisonment of Huma Abedin followed a Fox segment on the former Hillary Clinton aide. When he tweeted that “it was just reported” there had been no commercial aviation deaths in 2017, and took all credit. That report was from Fox & Friends.

Many of the president’s most vicious tweets, which seem to come out of nowhere, make more sense when you realize that they are just his knee-jerk reactions to FAUX’s opinions.

Trump’s morning tweets upend parts of the news cycle, with some cable news producers and assignment editors redistributing time and resources to cover his latest comments. Others waste neither time nor resources. Statements from this president are inherently not newsworthy.