
"I was always a good student, I’m like a person that does well with that kind of thing."

Donald Trump attempted to defend his bizarre and at times abusive Twitter behavior Sunday morning, praising his own tweets as "well crafted" even as he conceded that he knows people want him to spend less time tweeting.

Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo asked Trump if his unscripted and often unhinged tweets "get in the way of the larger message."

Trump acknowledged that people have told him to lay off social media, but that he likes the attention he gets when he tweets.


"When I put it out, you put it immediately on your show," Trump boasted.

He defended his tweets as "well-crafted," and offered this trenchant self-analysis: "I was always a good student, I’m like a person that does well with that kind of thing."

He whined about the "fake media" treating him so badly, and added that "I doubt I'd be here if it weren't for social media."

And he pompously stated that he likes Twitter because it allows him to directly attack his critics in front of a large audience.

"I have a tremendous platform," he said. "So when somebody says something about me, I’m able to go ‘bing bing bing’ and I take care of it.”

Despite his claims that his tweets are "well crafted," Trump often makes glaring grammatical and spelling errors in his tweets, prompting him to delete many of them (sometimes repeatedly) to correct his mistakes. This habit is no small issue; it actually led to a lawsuit filed in June by two government watchdog groups, who accused Trump of violating the Presidential Records Act by deleting his tweets.

According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, nearly 7 in 10 Americans, including a majority of Republicans, think that Trump should stop tweeting from his personal account.

But if Trump's own assessment goes no further than "Bing bing bing and I take care of it," he's not likely to accept those widespread concerns any time soon.

Indeed, based on this interview, it appears that Trump cares more about attacking his critics and throwing red meat to his base than he does about behaving like a president or respecting the opinions of the vast majority of Americans.