Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday that he understands he won't be able to carry on with his current use of Twitter if he wins the Oval Office this year, but he suggested that he will miss the ability to direct the media with it. At a townhall in Beaufort, S.C., ahead of the early voting state's primary on Saturday, the billionaire businessman conceded that he will have to "tone down" his tweeting if he were to take the White House in November.
"It's a modern, great way of communicating," Trump said, The Hill reported. "Now, we have to use it in moderation perhaps. And if you become president, it has to be toned down a lot. I fully understand that. I'm an intelligent person. I'll tone it down a lot."
As it stands, Trump sees little reason to do so now, noting how much coverage he gets from the media simply by posting a tweet on the social media platform, saying, "It's unbelievable."
"I'll say a little statement about somebody. I'll say Jeb Bush is a total stiff. And the next minute I'll be in my apartment with my news on, they'll have breaking news about it. I'll say Ted Cruz is a terrible, terrible liar, the worst I've ever seen. 'We have breaking news,'" he added.
Trump, at 6.2 million followers, has by far the largest following among the Republican presidential candidates, and his tweets regularly register 10,000 combined retweets and likes. However, Trump has also gotten himself into some hot water on Twitter. In October, he deleted a tweet that insulted Iowa voters and then subsequently blamed it on a "young intern," according to TPM.
He deleted another tweet in November in which Jeb Bush was depicted as a Nazi, complete with a flag and swastika. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks attempted to smooth over the ordeal, saying that Trump did not see the image. "This was retweeted by Mr. Trump like hundreds of others," she said, according to Business Insider. "He did not see the accompanying image and the retweet has since been deleted."
