White House chief of staff John Kelly on Sunday said that he does not keep track of the medium his boss, President Donald Trump, uses to share his unfiltered thoughts, announce policy and issue marching orders.
“Believe it or not, I do not follow the tweets,” Kelly told reporters in Vietnam, according to the Los Angeles Times, where he is accompanying Trump on a 12-day trip to Asia. “I find out about them.”
Trump has used Twitter to insult people, places and things on the campaign trail, to ratchet up his rhetoric about North Korea’s nuclear program, to announce an impromptu, unvetted blanket ban on letting transgender individuals serve in the U.S. military, to attack members of the media and news outlets that publish unflattering coverage, and to alternately endorse and undercut members of his own caucus.
“Someone, I read the other day, said we all just react to the tweets,” Kelly said, according to the report. “We don’t. I don’t. I don’t allow the staff to. We know what we’re doing.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, Kelly insisted he does not need to keep the President’s posts in mind when it comes to policy development.
“We develop policy in the normal traditional staff way,” he said. “They are what they are.”
