Josh Earnest: ‘The Bigger the Scandal, The More Outrageous’ Trump Makes His Tweets

Josh FeldmanMar 6th, 2017, 4:43 pm

Former White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on ABC’s This Week yesterday that President Trump‘s Twitter strategy is to make his tweets more outrageous depending on the size of the scandal he wants to distract from.

Earnest, who had to say in the briefing room weeks after the election that he did not plan to respond to every single Trump tweet, told Martha Raddatz that Trump’s modus operandi is to “tweet or say something outrageous to distract from a scandal, and the bigger the scandal, the more outrageous the tweet.”

Earnest said this in response to Trump’s tweets accusing Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower. Raddatz asked him, “Can you deny that the Obama Justice Department did not seek and obtain a FISA court-ordered wiretap of the Trump campaign?”

Earnest responded, “The simple answer to that question, is, Martha, I don’t know. And it’s not because I’m no longer in government. The fact is, even when I was in government, I was not in a position of being regularly briefed on an FBI criminal or counterintelligence investigation.”

He said that the Trump administration is “working very hard” to try and distract the press from the scandals they don’t like being asked about (though they would hardly be the first White House to do so).

Watch above, via ABC.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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