President Donald Trump will “tweet whatever he wants” while in China despite Twitter, and most western social media platforms, being banned in the Asian nation.
An administration official told reporters Wednesday that the president would be tweeting as usual while in China. Twitter, Facebook and many other social media outlets are banned by the so-called Chinese firewall.
“The president will tweet whatever he wants,” the official said onboard Air Force. “That’s his way of communicating directly with the American people. Why not?”
According to the same official, Air Force one possesses technology that will allow the president to get his tweets out to the world despite the ban.
“I’m sure we’ve got the gear aboard this airplane to make it happen,” the official said.
The comments came just as Air Force one neared in Beijing, China when White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and a White House official who asked to be kept off-the-record met with reporters on board.
Sanders said that the president will consider whether to rename North Korea as a state sponsor of terror. The hermit kingdom was removed from the list by former President Barack Obama in hopes that it would steer them towards becoming a peaceful member of the world community – a policy that clearly failed.
When asked about Trump’s determination to denuclearize North Korea, an administration official reiterated the president’s comments from his speech to the South Korean National Assembly.
“There is a growing recognition of the intentions of the North Korean regime, which is to use these weapons to blackmail the United States and its allies,” the official told reporters. “They are designed to blackmail us into lifting sanctions, and into ultimately dissolving the alliance, getting American troops off of the peninsula, and into eventually reunifying the South and the North, under the North Korean regime.”
“The president sent a very clear message, he said: that is never going to happen, under our watch,” the official added.
The president and first lady landed in Beijing just before 3 pm local time, 2 am EST. And as of the publication of this article, no tweets have come from either of Trump’s accounts or the account of the press secretary.
