Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
President Donald Trump sits for an exclusive interview with Reuters journalists in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S. December 11, 2018.
- President Donald Trump is intricately involved in all tweets that go up on his personal Twitter account, ex-White House aide Cliffs Sims wrote in his new tell-all book, "Team of Vipers."
- Trump fires off "tweets from the residence at all hours and usually without an advance notice to staff," Sims wrote.
- The president did receive assistance in drafting some tweets from aides, but "you can rest assured that he wasn't letting anything go out without his sign-off," Sims said.
President Donald Trump doesn't let any tweet on his personal Twitter account - @realDonaldTrump - go up "without his sign-off," according to ex-White House aide Cliff Sims.
In a new tell-all book, "Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the White House," Sims offers an intimate picture at life inside Trump's tumultuous White House. This includes insights on the president's infamous Twitter habits.
Sims, who served as special assistant to the president and director of White House message strategy, wrote that it "shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone" that Trump is fully in charge of his tweets, though he does get help from White House social media director Dan Scavino.
"Dan was the rare person in the White House who was universally liked by all the staff," Sims said.
According to Sims' new book, Trump fires off "tweets from the residence at all hours and usually without an advance notice to staff."
"During the day, [Trump] would often call Dan into the Oval to dictate tweets, complete with punctuation instructions - dash, dash, 'sad,' exclamation point - and his own unique way of capitalizing seemingly random words for emphasis," Sims added.
The former Trump aide said that early on there was no official channel to submit recommended tweets for Trump, but Scavino often provided him with options.
"Trump would approve them, disapprove them, or make tweaks, but you can rest assured that he wasn't letting anything go out without his sign-off. In that regard he was like a publisher, fiercely protective of his brand and loyal to his audience - he only wanted to put out things they'd want to read," Sims wrote.
Trump's Twitter habits have been a subject of controversy since his campaign days, especially due to his tendency to attack his opponents and critics via tweets. But the president has long maintained that Twitter is an important avenue for him to directly address the public, despite concerns about the impact of his words.