Trump, the Twitter president, tweets his way into impeachment hearings

SAN FRANCISCO — President Trump may not be in the room for historic impeachment hearings probing his involvement in a campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, but the massive reach of his Twitter account put him there on Friday.

"As you sit here testifying, the president is attacking you on Twitter," House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a key figure in the administration's pressure campaign.

During Yovanovitch's testimony in the impeachment inquiry, Schiff read the tweets, giving the career diplomat, who was removed from her post in May, the opportunity to respond in real time.

Speaking to reporters during a break in the hearing, Schiff strongly condemned the president’s tweets, which he called “witness intimidation in real time.”

It was a remarkable moment: Twitter was not just influencing how Americans view the impeachment hearings, it was shaping how the proceedings themselves unfolded.

"The president was injecting himself and providing unofficial testimony and immediate rebuttals when he wasn't invited to," said Jennifer Grygiel, assistant professor of communications at Syracuse University who studies social media. "He was providing his take on the situation in real time."

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The internet was in its infancy the last time a sitting president, Bill Clinton, was the subject of wall-to-wall impeachment coverage in 1998, with none of the viral reach of social media or its many ills, from bot armies spreading conspiracy theories to rampant disinformation by domestic and foreign actors.

Today, social media has succeeded television, radio and newspapers as the go-to spot to catch up on – and weigh in on – coverage of hyper-partisan events. On Facebook, Trump and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have posted thousands of impeachment ads to fire up their bases.

After a political rally in Louisiana on Thursday, Trump tweeted: "Democrats must apologize to the USA," adding that "THE FAKE IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY IS NOW DEAD!"

In tens of thousands of tweets, Trump has transformed his Twitter account @realDonaldTrump, with nearly 67 million followers, into the official broadcast channel of his presidency. He routinely bypasses traditional media outlets, whether firing off market-moving missives on Chinese tariffs or lashing out at his political foes.

Some of his supporters don T-shirts that say: "Trump's tweets matter." That they do.

That's how Trump's Twitter account landed him in the committee room across from the Capitol on Friday, with his live tweets becoming part of the testimony over whether Trump’s political interests influenced American policy toward Ukraine.

Yovanovitch alleges she was targeted with a "smear campaign" by Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other allies of the president. During her testimony, Trump attacked Yovanovitch on Twitter, saying that everywhere she went in her career as a diplomat "turned bad." Asked about Trump's tweet, Yovanovitch called the comment "intimidating."

Trump rejected the criticism while speaking to reporters at the White House. "I have the right to speak," he said. "I have freedom of speech just as other people do."

Trump's attacks on Yovanovitch drew a backlash from Democrats and even some of Trump's Republican allies, though some defended him. Former Independent Counsel Ken Starr, who is frequently supportive of the president, told Fox News: "I must say that the president was not advised by counsel in deciding to do this tweet. Extraordinarily poor judgment." Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said she disagreed with Trump's attack on Yovanovitch.

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This is certainly not the first time the president has teleported into official proceedings via Twitter.

"He shows up at a lot of things, like the (Brett) Kavanaugh hearings, essentially every time something is said that he wants to persuade people to his advantage on," Grygiel said.

In an emailed statement, Twitter said the president's tweets "are not in violation of the Twitter Rules." Despite criticism from the left, the company has a mostly hands-off policy when it comes to the president's tweets.

In October when Senator Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential candidate, called on Twitter to suspend Trump's account, Twitter reiterated its policy: Tweets by world leaders are not above the law, but even those that violate Twitter's policies will not be removed if they have a "clear public interest value."

The phrase "I hired Donald Trump to fire people like Yovanovitch" trended on Twitter Friday morning as Yovanovitch testified. Twitter told BuzzFeed News the company was looking into whether the burst of tweets was coordinated. Later several of the accounts were suspended, the news outlet reported.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump, the Twitter president, tweets his way into impeachment hearings