How to predict the president's next bogus tweet: Just watch Fox News
Donald Trump's obsession with live-tweeting his morning cable news binges has made his erratic timeline...incredibly, disconcertingly, comically predictable.
One Boston journalist proved it on Saturday morning, with his own impressively prophetic tweet.
SEE ALSO:The president is literally tweeting what he sees on TVDavid Bernstein was watching Fox and Friendswhen he saw guest Hermain Cain (Remember him? The Hermainator?) regurgitate a bogus stat—one clearly too tantalizing for our Twitter-egg-in-chief to resist amplifying.
Cain claimed, somewhat misleadingly, that the national debt decreased $12 billion during Trump's first month in office, compared to a $200 billion jump in the same time on Barack Obama's watch. The talking point can be traced back to a sketchy right-wing blog known for peddling conspiracies.
"If Trump tweets that stat this morning you know where he got it," Bernstein tweeted early on Saturday.
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
Sure enough, about half an hour later, there was the president furiously completing the game of telephone.
Tweet may have been deleted
Those numbers actually check out, but PolitiFact still rates the boast "mostly false," considering the government's debt is constantly fluctuating for all sorts of mundane reasons. Trump has also yet to sign a law that would have any bearing on that number, so it's a stretch for him to take any credit for it, at all.
Trump's penchant for virtually berating his television is well-documented. Tweets that seem to come out of nowhere or indicate that Trump might be digging into obscure blogs can usually be explained by matching up his timeline to various cable news broadcasts. Lesson, learned: If you ever wanna know what Trump's gonna Tweet before he gets around to it, well, just watch what he watches. Maybe you can even beat him to the punch with your own logistically reductive tweet about what you just saw on television. After all: Presidents—they're just like us!
Featured Video For You
Jordan Peele reacts to 'Get Out' as Barack Obama: 'Surrounded by white people! Not fun'