Why Trump’s tweets are a family affair

AJewish friend in New York offers valuable insight into the reckless tweeting of Donald Trump. On Saturday, for example, the president responded to the prosecution of his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, by tweeting that he fired Flynn in February “because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI”, about his discussions with Russia’s ambassador to the US last December.

This clearly implies that Trump knew Flynn had committed a serious crime when, according to the then FBI director James Comey, the president asked Comey the next day to halt an FBI investigation into Flynn.

“That’s a confession of deliberate, corrupt obstruction of justice,” said Laurence Tribe, a professor in constitutional law at Harvard and one of several experts who believe that Trump’s tweet could have left him vulnerable to criminal charges.

Why on earth did he say such a kamikaze thing to his 44 million Twitter followers? According to my friend Esther, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, are the ones who restrain Trump’s social media outbursts during the week. But Ivanka became an Orthodox Jew when she married Kushner. So, between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday, the Kushners observe Shabbat and have no contact with the White House. Donald is left – literally – to his own devices.

The Kushners were on their day of rest when Trump issued his executive order on immigration. Slate magazine tried to work out what happens when his daughter’s moderating influence is missing. For example, the president is more likely to use consecutive capital letters: FAKE NEWS!!! One Shabbat tweet read: “What Is Our Country Coming To (When a Judge Can Halt a Homeland Security Travel Ban).”

Short of confiscating his phone, what can a despairing Ivanka do? She knows that if Donald Trump ends up being impeached, it’s the Shabbat tweets that will be his downfall.

Oy vey!