Donald Trump ‘needs to tweet like we need to eat’, says Kellyanne Conway

New York Times finds more than half of president’s social media posts devoted to attacking his enemies in politics and the media

Donald Trump’s White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has said the president “needs to tweet like we need to eat” in an interview with The New York Times.

Ms Conway told the newspaper that Twitter enables the president to reach “regular people” and represents “the democratisation of information ... They all hear ‘ping’ at the same time”.

The Times, a frequent target of Mr Trump’s ire on the platform, published an analysis of his social media output since taking office in which it found that more than half of his 11,390 presidential tweets saw him attacking his enemies in politics and the “Fake News media”.

The president attacked 630 separate individuals over the course of the 5,889 posts, according to The Times, from Democratic rivals like House speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff spearheading the impeachment inquiry into his “quid pro quo” call with Ukraine to celebrities like Meryl Streep, Bette Midler and Spike Lee.

The Times also found the president had tweeted no fewer than 1,710 times to spread conspiracy theories, 851 times to attack minority groups, 758 times to promote Fox News, 256 times to attack Hillary Clinton, 233 times to criticise American allies, 132 times to praise dictators, 95 times to publicise a Trump Organization business and 40 times to spread bogus concerns about voter fraud and America’s “rigged” electoral system (despite its allowing him to win the presidency in 2016).

The report also reports Mr Trump is currently tweeting at triple the rate he was in 2017 as the House investigation into his administration’s dealings with Kiev heats up. It also reveals that the White House considered introducing a 15-minute delay on his tweets in the early days of his presidency in 2017.

This would have allowed time to reconsider and potentially redraft his riskier pronouncements but the president himself dismissed the idea on the grounds that it could make his messaging less effective.

His thinking on the subject has clearly not changed over the course of his first term.

The president told a social media summit at the White House in July – an event attended by right-wing online personalities like Charlie Kirk, Diamond and Silk and Carpe Donktum – that Twitter was an important tool that enabled him to influence the day’s news agenda. “Boom. I press it, and, within two seconds, ‘We have breaking news,’” he said, with surprising frankness.

Ms Conway herself made headlines last week when she fell out with Washington Examiner reporter Caitlin Yilek, who published the audio and a transcript of a call in which the senior Trump aide appeared to threaten her for asking a question about her husband, DC lawyer George Conway, a persistent critic of Mr Trump who recently wrote a long essay for The Atlantic arguing the president was unfit to serve.

“If you’re going to cover my personal life, then we’re welcome to do the same around here,” Ms Conway said. “If it has nothing to do with my job, which it doesn’t, that’s obvious, then we’re either going to expect you to cover everybody’s personal life or we’re going to start covering them over here.”

Asked about the call by reporters on 25 October, she was unrepentant: “It’s not a threat. I never threatened her... Don’t use that word if it’s not true... If I threaten somebody, you’ll know it. OK?”