Monitoring President Trump's Twitter feed has become a parlor game inside Washington, providing endless entertainment to the administration's opponents. A media favorite, the rules are well known.

The game starts when something on cable television irks Trump so much that he fires off an ill-advised tweet. Like a starting gun, that sends the media hustling to find an inconsistency or contradiction between the president's tweet and the statements of his aides. Whoever copies and pastes the contradiction fastest, wins the clicks.

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017



Today at 7:25 a.m., for instance, the president tweeted in all caps that he would be referring to his executive order on immigration as a "TRAVEL BAN." And within a few minutes, dozens of journalists pointed out that Trump just contradicted repeated claims from White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

The president had made "very clear that this is not a Muslim ban, it's not a travel ban," Spicer said on Jan. 31. "It's a vetting system to keep America safe. That's it, plain and simple."

Sean Spicer on January 31: "When we use words like travel ban, that misrepresents what it is" https://t.co/RKmJTqaXr9 — Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) June 5, 2017



With quick thumbs and a long memory, Dan Merica at CNN won this round tweeting the above quote. His viral reward was something like 2,000 retweets. And it was well deserved.

More than idle entertainment, the charade has real consequences. Every time Trump shoots from the hip on Twitter, the president ends up shooting the administration in the foot. So far his half-cocked tweeting has undercut Vice President Mike Pence, the deputy attorney general and his entire press team.

The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017



This last tweet is particularly jarring because it comes as the Justice Department prepares to head to the Supreme Court. Previously the administration had argued that the immigration order didn't target Muslims specifically. But Trump could've undercut that logic when he took aim at political correctness.

The whole thing was needlessly damaging and part of a damaging pattern and it should stop. Almost six months into his presidency, Trump needs a win. He can start by stopping the needless tweets that tee up easy attacks by the media.

Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.