It is clear Trump has no time to be the President. He spends his time tweeting, playing golf or running a campaign for President in 2020. The joke is on all those who voted for him. All of you were fooled and are still being fooled.
44
When our media reports and stops spreading misinformation perhaps the President will feel it's safe to disarm otherwise to expect the administration to depend on this media to inform on anything other then a discredited Russia collusion fairy tale which the media played a role fueling or Stormy Daniels is absurd
4
If the Hatch Act prohibits "engaging in political activity by a government employee", wasn't Jim Comey violating the Hatch Act when he was FBI director?
6
All traitors will need to pay and I am afraid the price will be too high for the many, many people associated with DJT.
7
Another daily dose of nausea. No ethics. No morals, No analytic thinking. No discourse. Only propaganda, hate and discrimination. The real shame is that this uber shill makes more money than the teachers educating our kids, the nurses and primary care providers caring for our sick, social workers, fire fighters, policeman, etc etc etc. What will make our country great is that we can vote them out. All of them.
38
Ok--This new information doesn't change my mind about Trump's Tweets--the truth about any issue Trump raises is the just the opposite of what he says. Just read his next Tweet and apply my algorithm. Notice how quickly one comes to the truth about whatever is in Trump's Tweet. It almost removes the stress that is entailed trying to decipher what he means!
11
$180K per year to tweet. Where do I apply for that job?
17
Who is paying the legal fees to defend the President’s position that his tweets are personal and not subject to comment? If it is defended by anyone who is being compensated by taxpayers doesn’t that allow us to comment on his tweets.
5
After hearing Mr. Draper interviewed by the excellent Terry Gross, and reading this article I am beginning to see the genius behind the president's never ending tweets (Obama was a President, Trump does not deserve the capital P). It's the anti-Trump people responding to the president's tweets that fires up his base (calling those opposed to the president HATERS) and keeps the president in the spotlight. He feeds off the public anger. He gets off on being perceived as the anti-president. It is ALL dog whistles and gas lighting all the time.
If no one responds to the president's tweets (never mind who the real author is, or how inflammatory they are), Mr. Trump will implode. He needs the public's hatred to feel important. Without it, he will deflate like a balloon.
23
I'm a country boy. I feed the birds. I know a tweet when I hear one. What I hear coming from Mr Trump are "oinks".
39
'But Scavino got an office on the ground floor of the West Wing, just down the hall from the leader of the free world.' '[L]eader of the free world' ? One wonders whether article author Robert Draper's Weltanschauung has never made it out of the 1950s or whether his tongue is firmly ensconced in his cheek....
Henri
5
the current occupant of the white house can't even hate on his own
21
So, in effect, we are learning that Trump cannot even put together a cogent 280 character message without someone's help. That's somewhat less than a writing assignment for an average third grade student. Apart fromTrump's deficiencies in morality, honestly, and executive competence, he is clearing lacking in intellectual capacity as well.
29
It just shows how the man who coined the term fake news,is sooo fake himself.
31
"Trump’s most valued aide is the one whose job description has no precedent." Perhaps not in the United States, but in Hitler's Germany, this description of Mr. Scavino's role here is mindful of that filled by Joseph Goebbels there and then. Goebbels, you may recall, was Hitler's Minister of Propaganda.
64
So... there is someone in the West Wing impersonating the President? Writing in first person style about issues of importance both in national and international politics? We can actually not be certain that the messages from Donald are actually from Donald? "Rocket Man"? "Covfefee"? All the other insults, "Slimy Comey" etcetera?
Is this not... fraud? Treason?
17
It will be a great day in America when this nest of snakes and lampreys is gone. What a stain they are.
26
If you're going to make his existence public to a larger part of the population, show Scavino’s face without the tweet screens in front of it. He's a public figure the way Hicks and Huckabee Sanders are so let's see his full mug shot!
24
Well, if Scavino quits or is fired, Trump can always hire some white supremacist to channel his thoughts for all these ridiculous, childish tweets that are intended to stand in the place of real policy decisions, outrage millions the world over, and keep Trump's angry base in the fold.
Is Draper's disclosure that Trump's tweets are often done by someone else going to shock and disappoint Trump's fans, who probably thought Trump was taking the time (a lot of time) to tweet to them personally?
I doubt it very much, because I have come to believe that Trump supporters far prefer the fake to the real. There is no more fake pretender president than Trump; no more dishonest political party than the GOP that continually falsely advertises its legislation benefits the middle class when it actually greatly benefits the rich by taking from the middle class; and no more untruthful faux "news" organization than Fox.
But in the world according to Trump, it stands to reason Trump's governing by tweets would be fake too and done by someone else pretending to be Trump.
Trump and the GOP have clearly demonstrated that you can fool about 35-40% of Americans most of the time. Sad. How can we bring down the percentage???
18
Is it legal for the taxpayers' money to be spent on paying someone who writes Mr.Trump's personal tweets?
18
The American taxpayer is paying someone $180,000 a year to write presidential tweets? I realize that's relatively small potatoes when compared to other outrageous and wasteful budget items but what's next - the White House astrologer? An official palm reader? Someone to manage the television remote?
21
$179,700 a year of your taxpayers’ money goes to pay Trump’s typist? That’s really ‘draining the swamp’! Our Prime Minister doesn’t cost us that much and he can manage his own tweeting account by himself.
26
Your investigation for this article will provide valuable material for future presidential historians. Job well done.
14
"hree other defendants were named in the suit, which is expected to be ruled upon in the Southern District of New York in the coming months. One of them was Hope Hicks, long a public face of Trump World, the 29-year-old former model who spent the past three years as Trump’s media liaison before leaving the White House in late March. A second was Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s designated mouthpiece. But the third, unlike Hicks and Sanders, was someone most Americans have never heard of: a man named Dan Scavino Jr."
I was just wondering what relevance Ms. Hicks' age and teenage job had to the main point here?
1
"Former model" ? 29?
Young and good-looking?
Those were her qualifications,probably.
8
Boy, what a brown-nose.
“What do you do, Daddy?”
“Well Dan Jr I’m Mr Trump’s personal lackey - I write Tweets! Maybe one day you’d like to follow in your old man’s footsteps, huh?”
“Er, no.”
It seems even personal pride has its price.
15
If I understood it correctly from this exhaustively long article that Scavino essentially functions as the typist, he may want to take a remedial course in spelling. The misspellings are so awfully embarrassing coming from a presidential Twitter feed.......not to mention the contents so many, many times.
9
that is an unusually reductive take on a well researched article. I suppose you look at a souffle and just see eggs.
4
What a hatchet job.You made the guy sound like Martin Bormann.That was commentary mixed with ho hum reporting.
1
Please stop referring to Hope Hicks as a "former model". She was a very casual part time model as a teenager, and hardly pursued it as a career in the way that, say, Melania did. Her focus has been on PR and messaging for her entire adult career.
This is just another lazy reporter trying to box her in as an attractive young woman without sounding sexist.
11
Anyone else conjure up Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer music video while reading this? Just overlay the main graphic in the article with various parts of the video. Here his head is exploding with tweets. There his mouth is uncovered by the wooden door and tweets come flying out. Perfect.
Mr. Scavino, you have a new personal theme song.
6
There will be very limited opportunities for Trump staff to find employment after he's impeached. Scavino will have to change his name.
16
Interesting to note that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in her capacity as Deputy White House press secretary, earns $165,000, while Scavino Jr. earns the maximum White House staff salary-- $179,700.
25
It's comforting to work for Trump as long as his pardons are still good. What an interesting feature of American politics.
11
Thanks for this story.
It appears that there is a wizard behind the curtain after all.
I do not do Twitter but the news media incessantly reports every one of the POTUS so I can do without an account.
CSpan even has a running, simultaneous posting of all of POTUS tweets as it appears in the media.
One thing for sure, no presidency will ever be the same.
And woe be to the White House that does not own this Twitter or social media world.
Finally, we could have done without those sanctimonious comments of the staff of the 44th. If they had realized it's potential, they would have grabbed it. As it is, they thought all Americans love those long winded speeches.
Given this article, indeed this modern day 240 character Hemingway is what the political world is going to remember.
What I would like to know, how would all these tweets be presented in a future library of this POTUS.
5
Featured front and center, since Trump'$ library will only have a handful of books... mainly ghost written ones "by" him and phony hagiographies by the likes of toady authors. No doubt there will be a special Sean Hannity collection.
8
It's instructive to watch the political advocacy press message its team members and toadies/trainees. Here we have the most common sort of political aide that every president has had, and the troops are somehow supposed to be on alert and ready to hate.
The three million new Trump jobs and the half-million who came off ''food stamps'' in A MONTH don't appear here, either. Surprised?
7
He's a toadie (or, THE toadie) who has now lost his marriage as a result of his work, and may lose his freedom (such as it is) as well. Hope it's worth it, even Scaramucci wised up in the end.
17
A technological update of Donald Segretti and Dwight Chapin, Nixon's fun-loving loyalists.
10
Reminds me of the Rhodes brothers, David running CBS News and Ben Rhodes as Obama's aide setting up the terrible Iran deal and then bragging about how EASY it was to fool the media.
Ha! No WONDER CBS News knelt down and worshiped Obama's foreign surrenders, ransom payments, and mistakes.
2
These poisonous true believers inspire dread, but the real damage they do isn't to the enemies of their princes. It's to their princes. This grimy jester feeds the worst sides of Donald Trump (assuming there's anything else but worst). More important, he and Trump feed the worst instincts in the worst people--the fears and prejudices of the most frightened, angry, self-marginalized Americans demanding their say as citizens in democracy and using it to fling waste like primates in cages. Trump knows that crowd. He knows what they want to hear and how they want to hear it. He feeds it to them like trainers feed treats to pets. Scavino is his two-thumbed scribe. He'll have written the definitive biography.
When this is all over, the Trump Presidential Library will be a deaf Twitter account with a link to a gift shop.
27
Who is behind the editorial decision to allow this writer to refer to Ryan's retirement as having occurred during "...Trump's first term" ?
12
Robert Draper is a surprisingly professional, unbiased writer here, a veritable rose in our weed garden here. Oddly, the Atlantic today also carried a professionally written article that contains no pandering to the progressive masses.
Is the media reconsidering its enslavement to the liberal Dem plantation, bit by bit?
Not sure which is more disturbing: to think that Trump's inane, semiliterate tweets are composed by the person who is the President of the United States or to learn that they are the work of a government employee who is paid six figures a year to produce them.
64
Another "Swamp Creature" born and bred by Trumpism. Thank you Mr. Draper, great reasearch.
20
I appreciate that Dianne Feinstein is pursuing a deposition or interview withMr. Scavino related to the conspiracy to obstruct justice in the investigation of the role of Russia in the 2016 election.
Having worked on high value corporate litigation for many years we observed that honest people rarely felt the need to hide any of their activities, but the scoundrels felt a need to hide everything. That made for some interesting revelations in court, and some extremely expensive settlements.
27
Are you referring to the deletion of thousands of emails and bleaching the hard drives?
2
I have been nauseated and terrified by Trump's and many of his core followers' nastiness since forever, and this article provides chapter and verse as to why we should all feel that way.
"A willingness to engage in lies and smears on behalf of Donald Trump is a sign of loyalty that Trump treasures.”
"His incessant howling of personal grievance ... In baring his smallness, the billionaire New York developer managed to collapse the differences between his gilded life and that of white Middle America."
"Ryan facing the microphones and, with a mortician’s smile, trying to explain away “It’s what he does. We’ve kind of learned to live with it.”" (Riiiight)
This guy is making a good living (on our dime) with the "care and feeding of his boss's ego".
People complaining about Comey's mob characterizations should think again.
And while you're at it, if you haven't heard of Cernovich, things are worse than you thought: "“Scavino’s not an ideologue,” he said disapprovingly. “I don’t think he wakes up and says, ‘Holy hell, I want to break things today — who do I go after?’ It’s more, ‘I like my job and the Trump family.’ ”"
His use of government money is immune from punishment because his boss is the president. Too bad about the rest of us.
Good writing, thanks!
37
Anyone who hasn't OD'd on the awful, or who thinks it's not as bad as people are beginning to realize, ought to take a look at this as well. "Trolls for Trump" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump
"The “paternalistic” media, he said, was giving way to a more democratic one. “It makes journalists crazy, because they used to be in control,” he said. “They can’t control people anymore. Everyone has a voice now.”" A student of Breitbart. How did Breitbart and lies become respectable? The politics of resentment and reaching for the bottom.
We humans are in deep deep trouble.
14
Thanks for such a well researched and incisive article by Mr Draper.
Love the reference to the Mailer piece on JFK for the Television Age, and the parallel back to modern social media. I think its fair to say no matter what you think of the content, he who doesnt study history, is doomed to retweet it.
13
Scavino is part of the Trump propaganda apparatus. He too will be held accountable.
20
Trump's tweets are a national shame, as they are full of hate and vindictiveness, and an affront to the truth. And his enablers, among them a dedicated brainless loyalist, ought to feel deep shame in helping a runaway brutus ignoramus survive his 'standing', however irrelevant to reality. And Dan Scavino and Stephen Miller are suspect of perjury by accommodating outright lies 'in tecnicolor and synchronized sound' for consumption of a clueless and prejudiced audience. How long can this last, now that the truth insists in showing up?
23
Lock Them Up. ASAP. Please!
It's MUELLER Time.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
The Trump team is trying to run out the clock.
The clock strikes one. Soon they will all be well DONE.
Let Mueller bring ALL Trump'$ scams and the Russkie plans into the Sun.
We and Trump'$ base Base will see... FINALLY... Before they flee.
What truly Be. The crooked lying liar Fox and They believe.
What sin shall next unfold... when the list of Trump Team felons is so bold.
Lucky for US...
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
5
Ah! This explains that whole "shadow government" thing I've been hearing about.
18
Thanks for the info on his salary. Now we know the price of selling one’s soul. And imagine all the comments other Repubs are probably making....ie, does he roll over and do tricks? I actually feel sorry for the guy.
16
I don't. He's essentially been a lackey his entire life. Now he just gets paid more.
14
a tough profile to read. yet another morally bankrupt enabler in our President's ever smaller clique. it would be crushing if the wheel's of justice weren't turning and Nov wasn't inching closer.
15
It's wonderful for President Trump to have a few good men around him in the Swamp who are completely loyal.
2
Thank you, NYT for peeling back another layer of this mess. Good to know about Scavino and his fealty to "the Don." Scavino, if you are reading this (and I'm sure you are because the article is about you), please continue blathering on about witch hunts involving the Don while feigning outrage and innocence. Only guilty people do this. Really. I also appreciate the well-documented public record you and the Don have built which may be used against you in the future.
30
Trump needs Hope Hicks back. Calling Comey a Slim all was not a very effective personal attack.
What a bunch of schoolyard bullies. Pretty on the outside but ugly on the inside - that is what unbound privilege leads to.
11
This person should be ashamed of himself. Trump's tweets are appalling.
10
What's most galling and disgusting about scavino is not that he's a lickspittle and sycophant but that our tax dollars go to pay his disproportionate salary as little more than still trump's caddy; donnie's going to have to build a new swamp to house all of his swamp creatures -- probably where our 'infrastructure' dollars will go.
18
Is everyone in this administration an angry, selfish person? I have never seen so many individuals with arrested development in my life. Work for this administration and turn your back on your family, your integrity and your self-respect. Attack the leader’s enemies any way possible through lies and defamation. Sounds like a street gang or a criminal enterprise to me.
27
Sally, clearly that WH mentality appealed to a very immoral, clueless, unapologetic, bigoted, racist, dishonest, unethical, and insecure majority. To them, the swamp is fine, come on in.
5
Another well researched, investigative report from the NYTs... Keep up the good work... Keep digging... Keep turning over the rocks... Keep uncovering the truth... You are the shield protecting us all....
39
Scavino's "grunt work" apparently entails making Trump's twitter grunts more readable. But you cannot disguise a pig. A grunt is still a grunt, and an oink an oink. And anyone who thinks @realDonaldTrump is going to get a second term, let alone complete is first, is living in dreamland.
8
Sure hope you are right. But lots of folks don't bother to vote.
And 'stoopid' gullibility is a major US growth 'industry'. Enabled and financed by Republican backers like krooked Koch Bros, merciless Mercer, addled Adelson. Plus their cabal of CONs like McCONnell, Ryan, Cruz, Pruitt, and on and on. Basically take the entire Trump Cabinet and top republican "leadership".
7
So the propagandist-in-chief gets a 179k salary to help Trump insult people. Wow! What a great man!
34
Meet Trump's remora, a fish attached to a larger body (like a shark) and feeds on the parasites that infect the host body.
14
Twitter has become the non-official official organ of the presidency. (Okay, I did stop for a minute and linger over that word "organ," but it's legitimate in this context for both its meanings).
So many thorny questions arise, starting with: Why does Twitter allow the same bullying, name-calling and lie telling that would cause them to block and shut down you and me?
They claim, because DJT's tweets are "newsworthy" and have "public interest."
Balderdash! They make clicks. And they make the communication of so-called official pronouncements no better than a junior high feud.
Think of, for example, the Gettysburg Address, and then, crestfallen, well remember the cacophony of DJT: a disgrace! crooked! lyin'! belongs in jail! slime ball! loser! witch hunt! failing! no collusion! leaker! fake news!
Day in and day out it's the spectacle of Trump bleating from his tiny fingers. He's in tabloid heaven. He lives for ratings. He only cares that we notice him. Relentlessly.
17
So it turns out the twitter addict we have to call POTUS is so incompetent that he needs help posting his inane tweets. God help us all.
26
If there were ever a reason to discourage your children from majoring in Communications, it certainly would be the likes of Hicks and Scarvino.
10
GH, you read my mind! I actually thought of former students who majored in Communications, and sighed in relief knowing they’d not be sitting in Scavino’s office :(
6
Wormtongue.
6
The fact that Scardino, as a government employee, is involved in overseeing the Twitter account makes it very hard for Trump's lawyers to claim that this is a personal, not official, account. Presumably, that's why he's a named defendant.
14
I could not finish reading this article.
54
While Donald Trump is busy rewarding his former caddie with a plum White House job he has also blocked the hiring of Jon Lerner, who was in line to be pollster for both Mike Pence and Nikki Haley. Maybe Donald knows that these two are getting ready to gang up on him to push him out. After that coup it would be President Pence and Vice President Haley.
19
"Scavino was one of the most powerful people in Washington, despite the fact that no one could explain what he did for a living"
A perfect description of the Trump White House.
127
"Scavino went on to major in communications at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh; he did a six-month internship at Walt Disney World, then later got a job with the Texas-based Galderma Laboratories as a pharmaceutical rep ... When that same Westchester golf club, which now bore the billionaire’s name, offered Scavino a job as an assistant manager in 2004, he accepted. Four years later, he was the club’s general manager ..." I have nothing against mediocre strivers with mediocre abilities, doing mediocre jobs in mediocre ways. I just do not think such people need to have outsize influence with a functioanly illiterate, mentally unstable, bigoted narcissist running the most powerful nation in the world.
83
Or receive a taxpayer-funded salary of $179,700.
13
I am far more offended by Scavino's six-figure tax take to write hate incitement and babble-tantrums for "covfefe" on bigoted Twitter, than by anyone who takes SNAP or the like. Let no GOPer who blabs about wasteful spending forget him.
Please don't dignify the mafioso crybaby as "the leader of the free world". It is an insult to our former presidents (bad as many were), which he never was; and to the leaders of actual free and developed countries, which ours increasingly no longer is.
83
"But Scavino got an office on the ground floor of the West Wing, just down the hall from the leader of the free world."
Not quite. Just down the hall from Donald Trump.
165
So, Trump doesn’t write many of his tweets, Scavino does. Explains the use of vocabulary and sentence construction that is clearly beyond Trump’s abilities. I’d been wondering who the ghost writer is.
72
Every time I see a Trump tweet with vocabulary and punctuation that's greater than a 2nd grader, I know Trumps didn't write it.
10
Social media director? That job ought to be filled by suppliers of social media - not a paid lackey of one of its users. That the role (if only fancifully) remains open to be occupied by our present day's biggest bully on the block says all anyone needs to know about social media; an ever churning waste disposal where truth goes to be chopped up while lies boldly float to the top - the bigger the lie, the longer it floats.
33
I wonder how many other people in the shadows like Dan Scavino are on the government pay roll?
91
...for ridiculously high salaries funded by the taxpayers.
8
Social media has leveled the playing field. The press can no longer shape the opinions of voters single handedly. Pushback is a reality. And the press does not like it.
Mr. Scavino is his editor, if you will.
2
Hedley - The words you're looking for in this case are "propaganda" and "lies."
7
And may we now assume that all those murderous acts against the English language contained in the Trump tweets are either crafted by or purposefully overlooked by editor Scavino, contrived to increase bonding with the semi-lliterate base of the Emperor?
1
I hope that when the Trump era ends and, yes, it will end, Scavino can live with himself and the fruits of his actions since it is very likely he too will be cast aside by the Trump family once he is deemed to be unhelpful. Or maybe he can go back to carrying Trump's golf bags or can return to a job as an assistant manager at a Trump golf property?
36
Hopefully slimy Scardino will continue working closely with Trump while "tweeting" like a canary in adjoining jail cells in hell if not in actuality.
The thought of them both rotting in hell or preferably prison brings a little smile to my generally depressed face.
3
Great article, very in-depth look at someone I'd never heard of without trying to create a narrative that didn't fit.
16
No one who is complicit in abetting the tweets from Mr.Trump should be proud.Mr.Scavino made himself scarce for this investigation by Mr.Draper because he does not want more notoriety which would again force him to get a lawyer.Mr.Trumps tweets are an unabridged stream of consciousness from any given moment in his life.They expose that he lies and is mean and not trustworthy.Every tweet proves that Mr.Trump is not concentrating on what is good for the country, his only concern is Mr.Trump.
43
As a son of the Hudson Valley, Scavino is doubtlessly familiar with Sing Sing. May his familiarity increase.
111
"What Scavino was offering were the services of a registered independent who had no experience in politics. He had only one qualification: He was a Trump die-hard. Lewandowski hired him on the spot."
Another mindless brick in the Twidiotic Trump Titanic to help sick the country into one of America's mostly deeply disturbed psychological hellholes.
Ethics ? Never mind.
Sense of right and wrong ? Never mind.
Political qualifications ? Never mind.
Undying loyalty to cheesy dollar bills and the Trump 'brand' ? Giddy-up !
"You're hired to Make America A Trump-Trash-Toilet !"
Vote on November 6 2018.
181
We certainly knew Trump couldn't write some of this stuff, but Scavino has maintained the lowest profile of anyone in DC, so this little introduction is welcome.
Some of those tweets appear defamatory, in a legal way. Most of the attacks and hysteria in the tweets has nothing to do with official government business, so this man should not be receiving a public salary for doing private PR for Trump.
Perhaps he'll have to return the salary someday - and be reduced to suing his beloved boss for back wages. Good luck.
135
It could be that Mr Scavino is the forerunner of a new position, the political amanuensis - per Merriam-Webster online, a "slave with secretarial duties."
1
Indeed. Scavino posing as the @realDonald Trump on the public dime; such an Such a loser! (There I nailed in in less than a 144 characters !)
1
“It’s so great that I have Twitter now, because I can knock the crap out of people,” Donald J Trump.
Scavino has risen impressively from polishing the President's golf clubs to chief hit man on the Trump Train, a career path likely to land an even bigger promotion for him some day. I heard White House Chief of Staff might be open very soon and the President is over his infatuation with military brass.
Knocking the crap out of everything from people to countries is the primary operating mode for Trump. He leads with an attack to outrage his opponents and please his base, and then offers to negotiate on terms more favorable to him. Whether its trade, immigration, nuclear or climate treaties, the pattern is the same.
Today Trump would have us believe he is willing to re-enter the Paris Climate Accord and TPP, offer relief from tariffs to specific countries, stay in the Iran Nuclear Treaty and NAFTA and talk with North Korea.
But he needs a guy like Scavino to help him gain the offensive first with a Twitter barrage of lies, distortions, conspiracy theories and name calling.
So Dan, your immediate future is bright! But after that you may find yourself on the defensive, with a lot of subpoenas, testifying under oath and maybe worse, along with several other former White House officials.
Don't count on Trump or Michael Cohen protecting you.
189
Don't kid yourself, this sycophant is still just polishing the clubs, only now they're dangerous to civilized society...
1