Buried deep in a Daily Beast report on how Donald Trump shuts out media reports that don't fawn over his presidency is a fascinating note pointing out that the president is adamant that aides hand him printouts of tweets praising him within minutes after he concludes his rallies.
Coming on the heels of a Trump edict that the administration is cutting off paying for subscriptions for the New York Times and the Washington Post because their coverage of him -- as one senior White House official joked because they don't "make him feel beautiful and powerful,” it appears that the president is in constant need of positive support when he is away from a TV and can't watch Fox News.
Noting that Fox News is still a "bastion of Trump adoration, especially in times of crisis. In the past four months, the president has granted interviews to Fox stars Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity (twice), Brian Kilmeade, Ed Henry, and Jeanine Pirro. Most of the aforementioned hosts also moonlight as some of Trump’s closest informal advisers on messaging, politics, and policy," the Beast reports that is not enough.
Highlighting a recent tweet from Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren showing off a sheaf of her tweets autographed by the president, the Beast's Asawin Suebsaeng reports printouts of Twitter praise for Trump is something he lives for.
"The autographed piece of paper the Fox Nation host received is actually the result of a long-standing demand that Trump has made of his aides, one that started during the 2016 campaign and continued into his presidency. Following a MAGA rally, staff began compiling packets, which would sometimes stretch numerous pages, exclusively displaying tweets about the rally Trump had just headlined," the reports states. "His campaign team began providing these packets to the candidate to review after each event, so much so that he began expecting them after every rally."
"Trump became so accustomed to these pages that, according to a source familiar with the matter, he would complain to senior aides if he didn’t have the packet of Twitter posts in hand to read over within 20 minutes of the campaign rally ending, " Suebsaeng continued, adding, one senior administration official explained, "It remains to this day a source of joy for the president. He will sometimes wave [the post-rally print-outs] around, talking about how much people love him and what a great job he did, before confiding, "It’s often someone from Fox or some guy from the internet tweeting about the president.”
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