After reports surfaced last week about (then, President-Elect) Trump turning in his Android phone for a more secure device, something similar to what President Obama used, The New York Times is now reporting that President Trump is still using his unsecure Android smartphone, likely to post to his personal Twitter account, in addition to the @POTUS account. Many of his aides, as well as the Secret Service, have been urging Trump to give up that unsecure smartphone and stick to the secure one that was issued to him.
It’s important for the President to use a secured device, as he is dealing with a bunch of confidential information – as we’ve seen with the Hilary Clinton email hack – and the secured device has a new number that only a handful of people have. Meaning that not just anyone can call the President, which makes sense since he is a pretty busy guy. The secured smartphone also only has a handful of applications that can be installed, which doesn’t include Twitter. As President Obama put it a few years ago, he can basically make calls and reply to text messages, and that’s about it.
President Trump has had a pretty eventful first week in The White House, signing all sorts of executive orders, meeting with many business and foreign leaders, it makes you wonder how he has time to Tweet from his personal device on issues like the violence in Chicago. Reportedly, Trump was watching a report on Fox News about the violence in Chicago last night, which made him fire of a few Tweets about fixing the violence and saving lives, before he sends in the Feds.
Since Trump is now President, there’s really no one that can force him to hand over his phone. Hopefully he’ll do it sooner rather than later. That way he can focus on running the country, and not have to worry about details being leaked out, which has already been a big focus for him even before taking office. Unsecured devices, whether they are smartphones or email servers, are not good when talking government. Of course, this may be false and he may actually have turned over his phone. Keep in mind that this is a report and not official from President Trump.