Rep. Keith Ellison says President Donald Trump has a lot in common with the man who helped spark the Revolutionary War: King George III.
NPR’s Rachel Martin invited the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee on air Thursday to discuss Mr. Trump’s skill for using Twitter to go “directly to the American people.” The Minnesota congressman weighed in while alluding to an era in which the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party preceded a bloody war for independence.
“I see [Twitter] in general as a good thing to foster communication from the government, but I think it can be used in a very bad way because what he’s doing through his Twitter account and in other ways is circumventing the whole system to intimidate people, to pack courts, to intimidate the press, all so that he can just run everything himself,” Mr. Ellison said, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
“We fought a war of independence against somebody, King George, who was trying to do that. This is really why I’m actually kind of concerned about his use of social media, not the fact that he uses it,” the Democrat continued. “The way that he uses [Twitter], I think, is damaging to representative democracy,” Ellison added.
Mr. Trump regularly uses Twitter to reach roughly 35 million followers.
“I love Twitter. It’s like owning your own newspaper — without the losses,” Mr. Trump told his followers in November 2012.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.