{"id":25863,"date":"2020-06-10T16:03:17","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T23:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=25863"},"modified":"2020-06-10T16:03:17","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T23:03:17","slug":"ongoing-headache","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=25863","title":{"rendered":"ONGOING HEADACHE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senate Republicans are facing new headaches from an old source: President Trump<\/a>\u2019s Twitter account.<\/p>\n

The president this month has weighed in on the handling of protesters, called out several Republican senators by name and, most recently, amplified a conspiracy theory about a 75-year-old man injured by police in Buffalo, N.Y.<\/p>\n

Sen.\u00a0John Thune<\/a>\u00a0(R-S.D.) distanced himself from the president\u2019s latest tweets on Tuesday but acknowledged that GOP senators would also largely prefer to not have to talk about Trump\u2019s social media habits.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us up here would rather not be political commentators on the president\u2019s tweets because that\u2019s a daily exercise,\u201d Thune said.<\/p>\n

Sen.\u00a0Lamar Alexander<\/a>\u00a0(R-Tenn.), who is retiring, said he would leave it up to others, including the \u201cdistinguished media,\u201d to evaluate Trump\u2019s tweets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe voters can evaluate that,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019m not going to give a running commentary on the president\u2019s tweets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Twitter account has been a persistent headache for congressional Republicans, many of whom outsource their own message-disciplined social media accounts to their staff. But Trump\u2019s tweets have been a key source for news, with the president using it to fire top staff, announce executive orders, opine on legislation and even vent against members of his own party.<\/p>\n

The president tweets, sometimes hundreds of times a day. GOP lawmakers are then asked to weigh in, forcing them to decide whether to break with Trump, support him or, in many cases, say they haven\u2019t seen the tweet in question \u2014 extending the news cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Republicans are facing new headaches...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25864,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25863\/revisions\/25864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}