AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President Donald Trump during a meeting at the White House.
President Donald Trump on Monday encouraged Americans to buy a book trolling Democrats that went viral earlier this year."A great book for your reading enjoyment: 'REASONS TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS' by Michael J. Knowles," he tweeted.
The book, "written" by an editor at the conservative publication The Daily Wire, has 260 blank pages. It features typical endorsements on its jacket, including a description that calls it "riveting from cover to cover," and even made it to the top of Amazon's bestseller list briefly in March.
Knowles even went on "Fox and Friends" to promote the book last month.
"It took a very long time to research this book," he joked. "I've been observing the Democratic Party for at least 10 years now and when I observed their record and reasons to vote for them - on reasons of economics or foreign policy or homeland security or civil rights and so on - I realized it was probably best to just leave all the pages blank."
Some didn't appreciate the joke: critics complained that the president was violating ethics rules by endorsing a product, a recurring issue for the new White House. Earlier this year, Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway was reprimanded by the Office of Government Ethics, the top independent ethics watchdog group, for encouraging Americans to buy Ivanka Trump's fashion line.
Observers have frequently noted Trump's reliance on trolling as a political tactic to enrage opponents. Media outlets have written how he trolled the press corps, the Republican party, and the world itself by provoking negative attention and refusing to apologize for incendiary remarks.