JFK Library gives legacy Twitter account

BOSTON (AP) — Former President John F. Kennedy helped inspire a nation to land a man on the moon — but he never got the chance to tweet about it.

That’s changing.

The JFK Library Foundation has launched a new project they’re calling “Words Count” that takes quotes from the nation’s 35th president and tweets them out using the @JohnFKennedy Twitter handle. The account features exact quotations said or written by Kennedy as president.

The goal is to use a 21st-century tool to pass the baton of Kennedy’s soaring oratory to a new generation who only know him from history books and news clips.

“There are many things that President Kennedy said on a variety of issues that effected domestic and international concerns that are as relevant in today’s world as they were in the early ‘60s,” Steven Rothstein, executive director at the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, said Wednesday.

Is the project also a subtle swipe at the President Donald Trump’s more bombastic use of social media? Rothstein won’t say, although an online promo for the project pointedly notes, “The words of a president count.”

“We’re really letting people draw their own conclusion of what they think,” Rothstein said.

Many of the tweets echo contemporary political debates, from immigration — “Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life” — to poverty — “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”