UNITED States President Donald Trump set a record of sorts when he tweeted 142 times in a single day last Wednesday, January 22. He was in Davos, Switzerland, when he started posting comments on his recent trade deal with China, mixed with tweets about his “very successful” time at the World Economic Forum in Davos, sprinkled with comments on the opening of his Senate impeachment trial.
He hammered out 41 tweets between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. in Davos. He continued to tweet every 88 seconds, according to Factbas.se, which tracks Trump’s tweets and speeches. He flew home Wednesday and by late that afternoon, he had more than 120 tweets. This exceeded his previous presidential record of 123 messages, set last December 12, 2018. By midnight, he had a total of 142 – the new presidential record.
But the 142 tweets is just Trump’s record as president. His all-time record is 161, set on January 5, 2015, which included a flood of tweets of quotes from fans of “Celebrity Apprentice,” a documentary reality program hosted by Trump, who was then a real estate developer.
In the last two years and two months that Trump has been US president, he has often used tweets to lash out at critics, raising questions of whether to consider these tweets as official statements or mere personal views. In one survey in the US, 73 percent of those polled said Trump’s tweets should be considered only his personal views. The White House itself has said the tweets are official statements.
Our own Philippine President Duterte does not go for tweets, preferring to speak directly to audiences in language that has also been criticized. Only recently, presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said we should not take the President literally, as when he says he will “kill” the rich. He really means kill the greed of the rich, Panelo said.
One cabinet member who tweets regularly is Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., who found himself in the middle of diplomatic controversy after he tweeted last Friday that he would reject any offer of blood money for Filipino worker Jeanalyn Padernal Villavende who was slain in Kuwait. “I reject any offer of blood money for the torture/murder,” he tweeted. Nor will he accept, he added, an improvement in Kuwait’s labor standards. “All I care about is blood for blood.”
The tweet was deplored by the state-run Kuwait News Agency, quoting an official source in the Kuwait Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It does seem so undiplomatic. But it is a tweet, not an official statement of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Tweets have become part of our new world of communication. US President Trump now uses it extensively to speak out on every issue. Our own officials in the Philippines should decide and reach some kind of agreement if we should – like US President Trump – make tweeting an accepted means of voicing out government views and announcing policy decisions and official action.
