President Trump’s tweets are considered official statements by the Kremlin and are relayed regularly to his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary said Tuesday.
“I do not consider myself entitled to comment on the actions of U.S. President Trump, it would be wrong,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, Russian media reported.
“In any case, everything which is published from his authorized Twitter account is perceived by Moscow as his official statement,” Mr. Peskov said of Mr. Trump, Reuters translated. “Naturally, it is reported to Putin along with other information about official statements by politicians.”
Mr. Trump has tweeted over 36,000 times since launching his personal Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, in 2009, including more than 2,400 tweets published since he was elected president in November 2016.
Mr. Trump praised Twitter in the past for letting him be “honest and unfiltered,” and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders previously credited the platform with giving the president “the ability to speak directly to the people without the bias of the media.”
Both the White House and Department of Justice have stated recently that they consider Mr. Trump’s tweets to be “official statements.”
The president’s chief of staff, meanwhile, recently said he doesn’t let White House officials even read Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed.
“Someone, I read the other day, said we all just react to the tweets,” Chief of Staff John Kelly said last month, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“We don’t. I don’t. I don’t allow the staff to. We know what we’re doing,” Mr. Kelly said. “Believe it or not, I do not follow the tweets.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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