Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon praised President Donald Trump’s use of Twitter, telling CBS anchor Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes that Trump uses Twitter to “disintermediate” the media and get his message directly to voters.
Bannon blasted his critics who called him “the enabler of the Twitter,” saying he thinks what Trump “does on Twitter is extraordinary.” His message to them was simple: Deal with it.
“He disintermediates the media,” Bannon said. “He goes above their head and talks directly to the American people.”
Bannon added that Trump resonates on Twitter because he says things that the “pearl-clutching mainstream media” do not deem to be correct, “what they deem is not right.”
He said that Trump does not need legacy media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CBS News because those organizations, at the end of the day, do not have Trump’s best interests in mind.
“And I don’t believe he thinks that they’re looking out what’s in his best interest,” he told Rose. “ He’s not going to believe that, I don’t believe that, and you don’t believe that.”
Bannon said the media’a criticism of Trump’s tweeting “is another just standard in judgment that you rain upon him in the effort to destroy Donald Trump.”
“He knows he’s speaking directly to the people who put him in office when he uses Twitter. And it sometimes is not in the custom and tradition of what the opposition party deems is appropriate,” Bannon added.
The Breitbart News executive chairman said Trump is not going to stop tweeting, and new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is “not going to be able to control it either because it’s Donald Trump.”
“It’s Donald Trump talking directly to the American people. And to say something else, you’re going to get some good there. And every now and again you’re going to get some less good, okay?,” Bannon said. “But you’re just going to have to live with it.”
In an interview with the New York Times magazine, Trump told Mark Leibovich that he will not give up his Twitter account.
‘‘It’s my voice,’’ Trump, who is the world’s most-followed politician on Twitter, said. ‘‘They want to take away my voice. They’re not going to take away my social media.’’
The same media and political elites who cannot stand Trump’s use of Twitter were the same ones who also slammed former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, whom I dubbed the “Great CommuniTweeter,” when she used created a Twitter account months after the 2008 election to get her message directly to the people. The same media and political elites who were light years behind Palin all obsessively used Facebook and Twitter years after they criticized Palin for doing so. And now, these same elites who are incensed that even a president can use Twitter and social media to bypass their establishment filters, are enraged that Trump dares to tweet directly to his voters in a language that may seem unrefined to them but comes across as authentic to voters on Twitter.