Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s staff prints out President Donald Trump’s tweets for him to read, Tillerson said Wednesday, noting he does not have any social media accounts of his own.
Tillerson praised Trump, saying the President is “world-class at social media,” and added that printing out the tweets makes sense because he doesn’t know what Trump is going to tweet in advance.
“Now on the one hand you can say, well, that’s nuts, why don’t you get an account? But on the other hand I’ve actually concluded that’s not a bad system because it goes out and I don’t know it’s going to go out, so there’s not a whole lot I’m going to do until it’s out there,” Tillerson said at an event at Stanford University, speaking with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Trump’s use of Twitter has been a hallmark of his presidency, offering him the ability to tout his agenda via social media. However, his use of the platform has also been controversial, after the President has used it to call out various world leaders, including North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Tillerson said Wednesday that at first the President’s tweeting took time to get used to, because “it was very unconventional for all of us.”
However, he said that once he looks at the information it’s “just his way of wanting to communicate on the subject.”