NOTE TO EDS: PLEASE REFRESH INTRODUCTION AS NEWS REQUIRES. PACKAGE MAKES NO MENTION OF IMMIGRATION BAN OR COURT RULING.
While President Trump awaits the courts' next move on his immigration ban he's hit out again at the media.
He dismissed as "total fiction" a New York Times report detailing the behind-the-scenes concerns of some top White House officials about his Presidency's direction.
And after a number of media outlets published weekend profiles of the President's top aide Stephen Bannon, Mr. Trump has insisted that he himself "calls the shots".
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports that the President's media consumption is now creating something of mini-economic boom.
IN: "President Trump's….."
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President Trump's Twitter account….as everyone knows…..is often used as a pretty blunt political instrument.
And so it was on Monday morning when he woke up in Florida.
Even before the orange juice was poured he took to Twitter and asserted: "I call my own shots….and everyone knows it".
But what caused that Tweet….who had suggested that he wasn't in control of his own administration?
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That's an excerpt from MSNBC's "Morning Joe"….a breakfast time TV show hosted by former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough.
And at 6:09 on Monday morning, he was talking there about Stephen Bannon…the former Breitbart News executive who serves as the President's very powerful top aide.
58 minutes later, President Trump put out the "I call my own shots" Tweet.
Coincidence?
Possibly….but it keeps happening.
Over on Fox News on Monday morning, Congressman Sean Duffy, a Trump loyalist, was offering these thoughts on the President's polling numbers.
AXX
Minutes later, the President Tweeted that "any negative polls are fake news….people want border security and extreme vetting".
This is happening now so often - and usually at breakfast time and late at night, when the President is known to surf the cable news channels - that the advertising community has caught on.
Any program that he's suspected of watching is seeing its advertising rate card soar…..because advocacy groups and others are clamoring to get their message in front of the President's eyeballs.
AXX - "President Trump, I hear you watch the morning shows".
Vote Vets is a non-profit organization that represents the interests of half a million military veterans….and is deliberately placing this advertisement featuring a soldier who lost a leg in Afghanistan on breakfast TV programs that Donald Trump is known to frequent.
AXX
That should rattle the morning coffee cups in the White House family quarters.
But if Donald Trump's viewing habits are known to Madison Avenue….they are also presumably known to America's enemies.
Getting a message to him….winding him up….deliberately getting under his notoriously thin skin: all seem to be very possible.
Twitter is a blunt instrument….but like those loose lips that used to sink ships, potentially a dangerous one as well.
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