Republican Sen. John Kennedy made the bold move of telling President Donald Trump that he might want to ease up on his unrelenting social media attacks against anyone who criticizes his administration.
The Louisiana lawmaker said it did not appear Trump had listened to him, but he also believed the American public was on board.
“He asked me, ‘How do you like my tweets?’” Sen. Kennedy told the Pod Force One podcast on Wednesday. “I said, ‘Mr. President, don’t take this the wrong way, but tweeting a little less would not cause brain damage.’
“He looked at me, said, ‘You don’t like my tweets.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t say that.’ I said, ‘I like steak, but I don’t like eight steaks at one time. And you can’t just say everything that comes into your head.’”
“He just says anything. He says everything,” the senator went on, adding that the president appeared to have been “cool” about his suggestion.
It’s not entirely clear when exactly Kennedy had this conversation with the nation’s rage-poster-in-chief, but he concedes his suggestion has since had “zero” impact.
Over the past week alone, the MAGA leader has tweeted about;
- An unflattering cover portrait of himself that he hated in the latest edition of Time.
- Artistic renditions of a prospective D.C. “Arc de Trump” to rival the Paris one.
- Details of lethal strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats.
- His bizarre ambitions of a 21,993rd run for the presidency in the year 90,000 and
- An AI-generated video of himself as a crown-wearing fighter pilot dumping mounds of literal feces over crowds of anti-MAGA protesters.
His social media output hasn’t always been to everyone’s tastes. Trump, after all, founded Truth Social in 2021 after he’d been kicked off Twitter for posting messages the platform, not then owned by Elon Musk, said could encourage further violence or lawlessness following the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol Building.
Despite his reservations about the pace of the president’s rageposting, Kennedy was careful to suggest during his Wednesday podcast that he thinks the majority of people are on board.
“The American people get it,” Kennedy said. “I’m not saying my party’s perfect, but I think this is the way most Americans look at it today.”
“People look at their choice, Democrat, Republican. They say, ‘Well, Republicans aren’t perfect, but the other side’s crazy,’” he went on. “And that’s why they elected President Trump. They know all about President Trump.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
