To many, Donald Trump is the Twitterer in chief, who communicates thoughts, policies and opinions to 80.4 million followers on the social media platform, often many times a day.
But at a briefing on Thursday in the Oval Office, he said he'd get rid of his Twitter account if he didn't find it a necessary in pushing back against a glut of "fake news."
"If we had a fair press in this country, I would do that in a heartbeat," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if, in light of his recent criticisms of the social media platform, he'd thought about deleting his mega-account. His response was quoted Thursday afternoon by The Hill.
"There's nothing I'd rather do than get rid of my whole Twitter account."
Trump's comments came as he signed an executive order targeting legal protections for social media firms. That executive order, in turn, came after he'd slammed Twitter this week for fact-checking some of his posts about the dangers of mail-in elections.
The order calls for new provisions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives social media platforms such as Twitter legal immunity from content that is posted by third-party users.
Trump noted Thursday that he's able to reach many people on Twitter. His use of the platform precedes his presidency.
Because many of his tweets involve insults and personal criticisms of institutions and rivals, his use of Twitter has been oft-criticized. Just this week, his tweets urged a re-investigation of a "cold case involving the death of an intern who worked for MSNBC's Joe Scarborough back when Scarborough was a political figure in 2001. The allegations have brought condemnations across the political aisle, and the dead woman's widower urged Twitter to take down the posts.
But the posts have remained; Trump has doubled down on the matter involving Scarborough, a vocal critic of the Trump administration.