How does one keep tabs on, and then interpret, a president who in a single year sent out more than 6,000 social media posts, conducted more than 433 open press events and held free-associating press conferences lasting close to two hours? The White House Stenographer’s Office calculates it has transcribed 2.4 million of Trump’s words, four times the length of Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace.
Tracking Trump is not just a problem for exhausted reporters – but also exhausted diplomats, who are tasked with searching for the signal in the ceaseless Trumpian noise.
Western diplomats have upgraded their media monitoring operations to take account of Trump’s habit of dropping an explosive policy announcement or launching an unexpected incendiary broadside against an ally at almost any point in the 24/7 news cycle.
Foreign ministries now also have to look out for the private texts of their boss reappearing on Truth Social.
For European diplomats, the late-night posts are often the worst since they may be landing on their phones as they make their way into work.
The UK Foreign Office discovered at 6.15am last Tuesday that someone, possibly Nigel Farage, appeared to have got hold of Trump through an intermediary to convince him to denounce the UK Diego Garcia deal, something Downing Street thought had long been put to bed.
There’s no need to understand him, these are just the ramblings of a demented fascist.
Largely true.
But the ambassadors don’t really have the luxury of that. Their job is to represent the United States and they are required to generally support what their country’s leadership says. So, their job is to make some semblance of sense of what Trump is saying. Or, alternatively, they can quit.*represent their country
He’s a US exported issue but he impacts quite a few countries, and their ambassadors
Ah, good point indeed!
Yeah… it also felt like an unnecessary gut punch / pedantic when typing it… but I decided it’s kind of important too
Have a great day
The White House Stenographer’s Office calculates it has transcribed 2.4 million of Trump’s words, four times the length of Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace.
And you thought YOUR job was bad? 😬
Couldn’t pay me enough to write down all the shit Trump spews every day.
The inside of Trump’s head is a world falling apart and nothing makes sense. Like the movie Inception, his mind is stuck in limbo and the sky is falling
transcribed 2.4 million of Trump’s words
Considering Trump’s extremely limited vocabulary, I expect they could do a lot of copying and pasting to save some effort.
But there’s so much free space in there!
Not if something else lives in his head permanently
