Donald Trump has been exposed for a lot of weird behavior during his presidency, and America has just learned another detail about him that we never wanted to know.
Former White House staffer Cliff Sims has just written a book called “Team of Vipers,” and in this book he exposes one of Trump’s secret obsessions. According to Sims, the president is obsessed with cable news chyrons, and actually makes his staff print out the all-caps banners whenever he gives a televised speech so he can read them.
Axios, which previewed Sims’ book, reported that this was a normal practice in the Trump administration:
When the President would deliver a speech somewhere outside of D.C., the research team would take screenshots of all the chyrons that aired while he was speaking. Then, adding those images to headlines and tweets from influential reporters and pundits, they would race to print out a packet before Trump made it back to the White House.”
Sims stated that Trump was obsessed by chyrons due to viewers who watch the news on mute. Sims said that Trump once told him, “it’s those words, those sometimes beautiful, sometimes nasty words that matter.”
Sims also detailed Trump’s terrible obsession with news in general. Instead of doing his job, Sims said Trump “consumed TV like the late Roger Ebert must have watched movies.” And it’s not just about the content — Trump looks at graphics, sets, outfit choices, lighting and other elements that have nothing to do with his role as POTUS. Sims demonstrated this by giving an example of one of Trump’s critiques of Fox News. Sims wrote:
‘The graphics on Fox are the absolute worst — are you looking at this?’ he said at one point. ‘CNN and MSNBC are both so much better. I hate to say it — honestly, I really hate to say it — but MSNBC has the best graphics. Fox is the best — they have the best talent. I mean, look at the rest of these people. They can’t believe what’s happening right now. But Fox’s graphics are terrible. They’ve got to do something about it.'”
As always, Trump proves to be a television star more than anything else.
Featured image via screen capture
