Trump deletes tweets backing runoff loser
After enthusiastically endorsing an Alabama senator’s campaign for re-election, President Donald Trump distanced himself on Tuesday night from the candidate’s loss by deleting his supportive tweets.
Hours after Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., lost in Tuesday’s primary runoff, Trump excised at least three favorable Twitter posts, including one sent Tuesday morning. In that tweet, posted as the polls in Alabama opened, the president boasted that Strange “has been shooting up in the Alabama polls since my endorsement.”
Strange, who was appointed to the Senate early this year after Jeff Sessions vacated his seat to become attorney general under Trump, conceded on Tuesday night to Roy Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice whose candidacy was opposed by leading establishment Republicans.
The deleted tweets were archived by ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism website, but are no longer public on Twitter, feeding into an intriguing legal debate about whether Trump is breaking the law when he expunges his tweets.
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence visited Alabama on Friday to attend a rally for Strange. The closely watched campaign was seen by many as a barometer of Trump’s political sway. Strange was the first candidate endorsed by the president to lose an election since Trump took office.
Around the same time the president was deleting tweets about Strange, he also deleted a tweet congratulating Moore on his victory. He later reposted that message, and early Wednesday he tweeted about speaking with Moore by telephone.
It is unclear why the president chose to delete the tweets he did. Several tweets endorsing Strange, whom the president often called “Big Luther,” but which were sent in the weeks before Trump’s visit to Alabama, remain public.
At a rally for Strange in Alabama on Friday, Trump openly wondered whether it was a mistake to campaign for the senator, given his flagging poll numbers.
Even after being elected president, Trump has maintained personal control of his Twitter account. He has used his posts to skewer opponents, respond to critics and, he says, to communicate directly to voters without the filter of the media.
“Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, because I get the word out,” he said in a March interview with Fox News. “I might not be here talking to you right now as president if I didn’t have an honest way of getting the word out.”
The president regularly deletes tweets with typos and misspellings. Less frequently, but not unheard-of, are erasures that pertain to more significant topics.
The real estate company run by the family of Jared Kushner is being sued by two tenants in Maryland for allegedly adding excessive and illegal fees to their rent.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday says businesses owned by the Kushner Cos. have been charging late penalties of 5 percent of tenants’ rent, but not just for what they claim to be late rent. The penalties were also tacked on for late “agent fees” and “court fees,” in violation of Maryland law, the lawsuit says.
It says the charges are part of a fee-churning scheme that keeps renters under constant fear of eviction, and guessing what they owe.
The lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Baltimore is seeking class action status.
The Kushner Cos. said it has done nothing illegal.
The suit was filed on behalf of Tenae Smith, 28, a mother of two with a baby on the way living in Dutch Village apartments, and Howard Smith, who lives in Carroll Park Apartments in Baltimore County. The two are not related.
Tenae Smith said she first noticed the fees after filing a rent escrow suit against the management company in December of last year stemming from living conditions she described as “not safe and healthy.”