The White House won't explain why the official presidential Twitter account doesn't retweet Trump's most controversial tweets

• President Donald Trump's political weapon of choice is his personal Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump.
• Trump has escalated tensions with Twitter this week, threatening an executive order to "regulate, or close them down" after a fact-check was slapped on one of his tweets where he made false claims about voting by mail.
• The @POTUS handle is also at Trump's disposal, but the official account mostly just retweets some of the content coming from @realDonaldTrump.
• The Hatch Act and federal records laws detail procedures over social media use for federal officials, but the method for why the POTUS account retweets some of Trump's personal tweets but not others remains unclear.
• "The White House complies with the relevant records laws, including as they apply to social media platforms," White House Deputy Press Secretary Judson Deere told Insider.

President Donald Trump has had a wild week on Twitter, but it would be hard to tell if you have only been following the president's official account.

Trump's main newsmaking tool is his longstanding personal account, @realDonaldTrump.

He has always been a prolific tweeter, but this week the president escalated his attacks on Twitter as a company.

But few of the president's most controversial tweets — including his recent false claims about voting by mail, which Twitter fact checked, and his baseless insinuations that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough is a murderer — can be found on the official POTUS account.

Under then-President Barack Obama, the @POTUS account was used for official administration communiqués and announcements, while Obama's personal account was used more sparingly for campaign and family-related content.

Under Trump, the @POTUS account is mostly reserved for selective retweets of @realDonaldTrump.

The White House did not explain why when Insider asked what the procedures are.

"The White House complies with the relevant records laws, including as they apply to social media platforms," White House Deputy Press Secretary Judson Deere told Insider.

The vague response underscores the mystique and lack of structure surrounding Trump's Twitter use.

An AI bot named Margaret uses syntax and other inputs to estimate whether Trump is composing or dictating the tweets, or whether a staffer composed them.

Dan Scavino, the White House deputy chief of staff for communications, is reported to have the most access and influence over the president's twitter account aside from Trump himself. Deere did not answer whether Scavino is involved with what the POTUS account retweets.

The distinction between the official and personal accounts is important when it comes to both the Hatch Act and the Presidential Records Act.

Under the Hatch Act, federal officials from members of Congress to White House staffers cannot use their offices — and, by extension, their official social media accounts — for campaign-related messaging. This gets tricky when it comes to the bully pulpit of the presidency.

As for the Presidential Records Act, meticulous procedures are in place to preserve internal and external communications — which is what Deere was referring to.

Yet the POTUS account does not retweet all of Trump's personal tweets, and has demonstrated a pattern of omitting many of Trump's most controversial ones from its feed.

The distinction between personal and official government accounts has caused issues for other high profile political tweeters, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Ocasio-Cortez settled a lawsuit after blocking a critic from her personal account, @AOC. First Amendment scholars have argued it's unconstitutional for government officials to block anyone for expressing a point of view, even if said blocking occurs on a personal social media page instead of an official one.

A court ruled that Trump cannot block people from his personal account last July.

For now, the broader distinctions between the president's Twitter pages beyond blocking remain unclear.

Read the original article on Business Insider