Trump keeps tweeting about news he sees on TV

On Friday, President Trump tweeted a quote from an article that was, for him, an odd news source: the legal news blog Lawfare. Citing the article, without any context or a link, he called this week’s court decision blocking his travel ban “disgraceful.”

LAWFARE: “Remarkably, in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother even to cite this (the) statute.” A disgraceful decision!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2017

Was Trump reading Lawfare? The answer seems to be no — he was watching TV.

Just minutes before Trump’s tweet, several journalists quickly realized, MSNBC’s Morning Joe aired the quote on-screen. (For the record, Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes soon suggested Trump was taking his words out of context.)

Trump has a well-documented love of cable news, but it’s only in recent weeks that his habit of tweeting about what he sees is coming into focus.

For no immediately noticeable reason, Trump tweeted about sending “the feds” to Chicago to fight crime in the city.

If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible “carnage” going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

Just before, this graphic appeared on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor:

The list goes on. A Fox News segment about Chelsea Manning apparently inspired Trump to call her an “ungrateful traitor.”

And a segment on CNN led to Trump voicing support for an extremely questionable project on “voter fraud.”

Sending seemingly off-hand tweets is hardly new behavior for Trump, but the link to TV has been either little-noticed before now or more pronounced since he took office. But as he keeps tweeting — and, reportedly, keeps watching cable news in the White House — it’s not unreasonable to expect even more, similar incidents soon.

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