Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday State Department aides give him printed-out copies of President Trump’s tweets so he can determine whether he needs to tweak U.S. foreign policy based on the social media posts.
“The challenge is just getting caught up, because I don’t even have a Twitter account that I can follow what he is tweeting, so my staff usually has to print his tweets out and hand them to me,” Tillerson told former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a Hoover Institute event at Stanford University, where Rice is now provost.
The country’s top diplomat then asked himself, “How do we take that and now use it?”
Tillerson praised Trump for leveraging the social media platform to “great effect” by “bypassing the way you traditionally communicate.”
Sec. of State Rex Tillerson says staff prints tweets by President Trump out for him:
“It allows me to now begin to think about, all right, how do we take that then into – if it’s a foreign policy issue, is it – what is it he’s tweeting about, how do we take that and now use it?” pic.twitter.com/DcyskFE21Bmdash; NBC News (@NBCNews) January 18, 2018
Trump has in the past dismissed Tillerson’s diplomatic efforts via his tweets.
In October, Trump said Tillerson should save his “energy” while dealing with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
“We’ll do what has to be done!” the commander in chief tweeted.
Tillerson on Wednesday also discussed at the event how he believed U.S. military forces should remain in Syria to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State or another terrorist group.