Another morning, another presidential Twitter tirade to contend with. Apparently President Donald Trump Googled “Trump News” earlier today and found the results to be very biased.
Presidents: They’re just like us, they Google themselves! Except maybe not. As New York Times White House reporter Maggie Haberman reminded us via Twitter, actually, Trump does not use a computer at all, meaning a staffer must have Googled on his behalf.
ABC News reporter Tara Palmeri, who also covers the White House, further explained that Trump sometimes reads on an iPad, which he refers to as “the flat one.”
As journalists covering Trump closely, Haberman and Palmeri are well-positioned to be privy to these sorts of details. (As an aside, “the flat one” is a pretty funny thing to call a tablet, evoking a high-low mix of a snobby type of coffee drink called “the flat white” and “Suck my fat one,” a decidedly not-snobby insult. The flat one! He really does have a way with words.)
But more critically, this once again raises the question of whether the president of the United States knows how to use a laptop, and the answer seems to be “nope.” This is hardly the first time Trump’s tech habits, or lack thereof, have been talked about. As recently as 2016, it was reported that Trump rarely uses a computer: He preferred to read paper newspapers and magazines and to have emails printed out for him. He has Barron for the cyber, remember?
And even though Trump has been president for two years now, he’s still stuck in his analog ways. Granted, he hasn’t had a ton of time to pick up new skills. There’s a country to govern, as well as golf games to play. And whoever said a president had to be tech-savvy, anyway? It’s not like he needs to know about hacking, privacy, algorithms … hmmm. Well, anyway, at least we’ve got the flat one now.
