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Comment by mal10c | Hacker News Reader

A mouthpiece yes, but an official way to "make policy" no. Policy is still created through official means like signing executive orders, etc.

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They count as official statements by the POTUS. No different if he were to go on TV, Radio, etc and make an announcement/proclamation.

These statements can have legal power behind them such as declassifying documents.

Is there a way to make a public statement as the POTUS that doesn't have legal force? Can the person who is the POTUS speak "as the man" rather than speaking "as the role"?

As far as I can tell, that's how President Obama used his personal Twitter account vs. the @POTUS twitter account. One was personal and the other official. The Trump administration has explicitly chosen not to draw that line (for whatever reason), which is what leads inevitably to decisions like this.

> A mouthpiece yes, but an official way to "make policy" no

Sorry but you are wrong. Trump's administration has stated that his tweets are official statements. Meaning, he can't block people who reply to his tweets.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-tweets-officia...

Huh, I stand corrected. Good find.

See also @RealPressSecBot, which hammers home the point:

https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot

For those who don't want to click, it collects Trump's tweets in real-ish time, and reframes them into images of official-looking messages. The latest one as of the time I post this comment begins:

    THE WHITE HOUSE
    Office of the Press Secretary
    
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    May 23, 2018
    
    Statement by the President

And then puts the text of Trump's tweet immediately below.

This has to be my favourite:

https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot/status/99928406869604761...

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