Macron's Subtle Jab At Trump: Tweeting And Being President Are ‘Not Compatible’
- 6 years ago
French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that tweeting and being president are “not compatible."
French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that tweeting and being president are "not compatible."
He made the comment during a recent Time magazine interview where he was asked if he follows President Trump's twitter account.
"I don't tweet myself. And I don't follow myself. Because it's not compatible with the kind of distance you need to govern and to preside," Macron answered. "To be president, you need some distance from events, from the permanent flows of news and reactions."
"I think that...when you have the responsibility of lot of big policies and a lot of people, you cannot react permanently on this kind of media or on any media," he also noted. "You need time, you need distance, you need to cross-check information, to think about what you should react to or not. And that's why Twitter is not always totally adapted to this kind of job. It's fine for your private life, but the problem is you don't have any more private life when you're President."
Trump, meanwhile, is known to be a prolific tweeter; he talked about his use of the social media platform in March.
"When I can reach, whether it's 90 million or 100 million or 80 million, however many people it may turn out to be, when you add everything up, and then of course it gets disseminated from there...Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, because I get the word out," he told Fox News.
He also gave the technology some of the credit for his presidential victory, saying, "I think that maybe I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Twitter because I get such a fake press, such a dishonest press."
But his Twitter habit has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, with a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from September finding that nearly two-thirds of Americans disapproved of his reliance on the tool "to communicate with the American people."
Meanwhile, Nate Silver with the statistics site FiveThirtyEight posted a column in September which indicated a likely correlation between the U.S. president's controversial tweets and subsequent declines in his job approval numbers.
French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested that tweeting and being president are "not compatible."
He made the comment during a recent Time magazine interview where he was asked if he follows President Trump's twitter account.
"I don't tweet myself. And I don't follow myself. Because it's not compatible with the kind of distance you need to govern and to preside," Macron answered. "To be president, you need some distance from events, from the permanent flows of news and reactions."
"I think that...when you have the responsibility of lot of big policies and a lot of people, you cannot react permanently on this kind of media or on any media," he also noted. "You need time, you need distance, you need to cross-check information, to think about what you should react to or not. And that's why Twitter is not always totally adapted to this kind of job. It's fine for your private life, but the problem is you don't have any more private life when you're President."
Trump, meanwhile, is known to be a prolific tweeter; he talked about his use of the social media platform in March.
"When I can reach, whether it's 90 million or 100 million or 80 million, however many people it may turn out to be, when you add everything up, and then of course it gets disseminated from there...Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, because I get the word out," he told Fox News.
He also gave the technology some of the credit for his presidential victory, saying, "I think that maybe I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Twitter because I get such a fake press, such a dishonest press."
But his Twitter habit has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, with a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll from September finding that nearly two-thirds of Americans disapproved of his reliance on the tool "to communicate with the American people."
Meanwhile, Nate Silver with the statistics site FiveThirtyEight posted a column in September which indicated a likely correlation between the U.S. president's controversial tweets and subsequent declines in his job approval numbers.