Trump goes on 12-tweet Twitter tirade

President Trump fired off a dozen tweets on Tuesday, touching on a number of subjects and creating a series of headlines on a day where his schedule was free of public commitments.

Trump called the porn star Stormy Daniels “Horseface,” ridiculed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for her decision to release DNA test results revealing his distant Native American heritage and scolded the media for writing “fake news” about his business dealings with Saudi Arabia.

{mosads}He threatened to withhold aid from Honduras if a “caravan” of migrants from that country comes to the U.S. border and jabbed Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his handling of allegations of bias against Justice Department employee Bruce Ohr. 

The 12 tweets, not including some retweets, came on a Tuesday where Trump, who has held a number of rallies around the country in recent weeks and has also been active in the media, had no public events on his schedule.

Such moments often create opportunities for the president to engage in his Twitter pastime, and Tuesday was no exception.

The president opened the morning lashing out at Warren over her DNA announcement, reviving his racially charged nickname “Pocahontas” and blasting the Massachusetts senator as a “phony.”

A couple hours later he was attacking another frequent antagonist in Daniels, to whom Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen paid hush money to keep quiet her over an affair she claims she had with the president more than a decade ago.

Trump celebrated the news that a judge dismissed Daniels’s defamation lawsuit against him and ordered she pay Trump’s legal fees by demeaning her appearance. 

“Now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas,” Trump tweeted, referring to attorney Michael Avenatti. “She will confirm the letter she signed! She knows nothing about me, a total con!”

Avenatti and Daniels quickly fired back, with the latter making a ribald joke about the president’s measurements.

In between, Trump probably made the most news with his comments about Saudi Arabia and Honduras.

“For the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia (or Russia, for that matter),” he tweeted. “Any suggestion that I have is just more FAKE NEWS (of which there is plenty)!” 

Trump’s attempt to quell speculation about his financial dealings with Saudi Arabia came a day after he suggested that “rogue killers” may have been responsible for journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance. Those comments followed a conversation with Saudi King Salman, which suggested Trump might accept an emerging Saudi narrative that Khashoggi was killed in a botched interrogation.

Turkish officials and Republican lawmakers have indicated it’s likely that Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. 

While the Saudi story has been the dominant topic in the news, Trump’s comments on Honduras appeared to be sparked by a report on Fox News, which the president is known to watch on weekday mornings.

“The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!” Trump tweeted roughly two hours after the “Fox & Friends” hosts warned of an approaching “caravan.”

Aside from those tweets, Trump also peppered in unremarkable posts about job openings, op-eds praising him and voter registration.

There have been times during Trump’s presidency when his staff has sought to keep his schedule busy to lower his time on Twitter. Trump has a tendency of reacting to cable news through the social media platform, and some of his comments on Tuesday could create headaches for the White House and Republicans facing a difficult midterm election in November.

Female voters are expected to play a pivotal role in the congressional battle for the House, and Trump’s latest comments about a woman’s appearance may be unhelpful. A Washington Post–ABC News poll published Sunday showed 62 percent of women disapprove of Trump’s job performance. 

Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), who is retiring from Congress and whose district the GOP is predicted to lose in the midterms, criticized Trump’s remarks.

“To say this is unbecoming of any man, let alone the POTUS, is a vast understatement,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to Trump’s tweet about Daniels. “And to say this enables teenage boys to feel they have a license to refer to girls [with] such names is obvious. It’s all very embarrassing.”

On the other hand, it was another day where Trump commanded the media’s attention and drove much of the news cycle.

Trump capped off the morning with yet another jab at Sessions.

“Where is Jeff Sessions?” Trump asked rhetorically after quoting Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge.

“Is it really possible that Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie was paid by Simpson and GPS Fusion for work done on the Fake Dossier, and who was used as a Pawn in this whole SCAM (WITCH HUNT), is still working for the Department of Justice????” Trump added in a subsequent tweet.