At a press conference today, Donald Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer brought along some handy props. During a discussion of Trump’s recent executive action to restructure the National Security Council (NSC), Spicer held up a printed tweet to illustrate his point that there had been “misreporting” on this issue. The tweet was from Obama’s former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, wondering where the CIA fit into Trump’s executive order.
Rice’s question of “where is the CIA?” feels pretty vague, but Spicer responded to her tweet by noting that the CIA hasn’t been a part of the NSC since 2005. He added that Trump will amend the memo to add the CIA back into the NSC.
It seems unlikely anyone in the room or watching the live stream would have actually been able to read what was on the sheet of paper, but Spicer apparently felt he needed hard proof of the tweet’s existence.
This is just one of several recent instances of tweets being printed out for political maneuvering, like when Bernie Sanders brought a poster of a Trump tweet to the Senate floor. If printed tweets are the new pie charts and PowerPoints, I only have one suggestion: make sure it’s big enough for your audience to read.