What's the real world fallout from Trump's tweets?
WASHINGTON -- Just this week, President-elect Donald Trump has tackled not only Russian hacking but House ethics, Guantanamo, Obamacare, crime and the auto industry through tweets.
On Monday, he had this this message about North Korea for China:
China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017
That prompted a response from China’s state news agency: “Twitter shouldn’t become an instrument of foreign policy. Foreign policy isn’t child’s play,” it said.
But Twitter has proven to be an important tool for Trump; A modern way of talking directly to the people.
Like Franklin Roosevelt did through radio and John F. Kennedy with television, in today’s social media era, Trump’s tweets can dominate a news cycle.
Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” asked him after the election if he would keep it up as president.
“I’m not saying I love it, but it does get the word out. When you give me a bad story or when you give me an inaccurate story or when somebody other than you and another network, or whatever, because of course, CBS would never do a thing like that right? I have a method of fighting back,” he said.
Two former presidential chiefs of staff, Democrat Bill Daley and Republican Andy Card, told “CBS This Morning” they don’t expect him to walk away from the medium he’s made his own.
“I think the tweet world is going to be our world for a long time,” Card said.
“Think before you tweet or speak. Before, it was before you speak. Now it is before you tweet,” Daley added.
Beyond foreign capitals, Trump’s tweets also are rattling corporate boardrooms. They have even affected the stock price of specific companies.
As a result, some corporations are making plans for how to respond if Trump tweets about them.