Feb 18, 2018 - Politics & Policy
A timeline of Trump’s weekend Twitter spree
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Trump addressed the nation on Thursday. Photo: Samuel Corum / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
President Trump has taken to Twitter repeatedly over the past few days, hitting on the two issues driving the news: the deadly school shooting in Florida and the indictments issued by Robert Mueller over Russian interference in the election.
The trend: Trump is in Florida, and spent some of the weekend speaking with local officials and first responders about the Parkland shooting. On Twitter, though, his main focus has been Russia.
Friday
- A federal grand jury brought charges against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for violating criminal laws to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that the indictment does not prove the meddling changed the outcome of the presidential election.
- The president and first lady visited Broward County, Florida, where 17 students and teachers were killed in a school shooting on Wednesday. He met victims injured in the tragedy and Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
- That morning...
Saturday
- The only item on Trump's public schedule was a series of calls to local officials about the school shooting in Parkland.
- There was a theme to his tweets: He is being vindicated by the latest Mueller indictments, and the media doesn't want to admit it.
- And one about Democrats:
- After it was revealed this week that the FBI failed to follow through on a tip about Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz in January, President Trump tied that failure to the Russia probe in a late night tweet:
- And then he tweeted once more about the Russia probe, this time going after his national security adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster's statement that the latest Russia probe indictments are proof that meddling took place in 2016:
Sunday
- Before 9am on Sunday, the president sent six more tweets about the Russia probe:
- He singled out out Rep. Adam Schiff — the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee — as a "leakin' monster," but then thanked him in the same tweet for saying the Obama administration should have set up a "more forceful deterrent" to cyberattacks after the 2014 Sony Hack.
- Then the president said the Russians "have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams" and "are laughing their asses off in Moscow."
- Finally, Trump went after a frequent Twitter target, CNN, retweeting a cartoon of anchor Wolf Blitzer
