President Donald Trump sought to correct the record Monday, casting himself via Twitter as a data-driven decision maker and accusing the media of lying “to marginalize” him. | Getty Trump: ‘I call my own shots … and everyone knows it’

President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to take issue with the portrayal of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as the “shadow president,” tweeting that he, not Bannon, calls the shots “and everyone knows it.”

“Saturday Night Live” opened over the weekend with a skit of Alec Baldwin portraying the president in the Oval Office, where he was joined by Bannon, who appeared as the grim reaper and advised the president to act on his worst impulses with cold calls to foreign leaders.


“OK, Donald. That’s enough fun for tonight,” the grim reaper says as the segment comes to a close. “Can I have my desk back?”

“Yes, of course, Mr. President,” Baldwin as Trump replies. “I’ll go sit at my desk.”

The skit parodied reports of Trump’s poor statesmanship during phone calls with foreign leaders and brought to life The New York Times’ editorial board’s opinion last week — headlined “President Bannon?” — suggesting that the former Breitbart executive “is positioning himself … as the de facto president.”

The Times also reported Sunday that Bannon is “the president’s dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump’s anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council.”

Nevertheless, Trump sought to correct the record Monday, casting himself via Twitter as a data-driven decision maker and accusing the media of lying “to marginalize” him.

“I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it,” Trump said. “Some FAKE NEWS media, in order to marginalize, lies!”