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Meet The White House's Newest Star: A Whiteboard

Meet The White House's Newest Star: A Whiteboard

A new star is emerging in the dog-eat-dog world of President Donald Trump’s White House: a whiteboard.

Friday morning, conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza tweeted, and then deleted, separate photos of himself with chief White House strategist Steve Bannon and national security aide Sebastian “Seb” Gorka. Featured in the background of both shots is a whiteboard that appears to outline ― albeit in not terribly groundbreaking ways ― the White House’s agenda.

The post came just months after Shmuley Boteach, a prominent Orthodox rabbi, tweeted a photo from within the White House that also featured in its background a whiteboard appearing to outline administration agenda items.

Friday’s whiteboard sighting came as D’Souza was visiting the White House to discuss his new book.

“I stopped by the White House to brief Steve Bannon and @SebGorka on how Trump can flip the accusation of fascism on the Democratic left,” D’Souza wrote in one of the now-deleted tweets, this one featuring a photo of himself and Bannon posing with a copy of D’Souza’s latest book, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left.

Among the items that can be spotted on the whiteboard are “EO [presumably ‘executive order’]: Buy American, Hire American,” and “Withdraw from TPP [the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a Pacific Rim trade deal negotiated by the Obama administration].”

However, the contents of the board don’t appear to be very major ― more like the sort of generic political language a TV producer might scribble to give a scene set in Washington more weight.

In one area of the board, the word “TAXES” is scribbled in big letters and accented with exclamation points and a circle around it. Slightly below that are similarly broad-brush policy topics: “Illegal Immigration,” “Crime” and “Welfare.”

D’Souza later reposted a picture with the whiteboard covered by an image of his book, and weighed in on the matter, tweeting that he deleted the images to “stir up conspiracy theories on the part of the kooky left.” He also retweeted the above photo showing his initial tweets.

Aside from the latest whiteboard appearance, the administration has had one other episode of appearing to accidentally advertise its internal messaging.

In November, as President Donald Trump and his advisers were preparing to assume power, the president was photographed alongside Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who was holding a piece of paper that appeared to contain a detailed plan for the Department of Homeland Security to increase regulation of immigration to the United States. Kobach was reported at the time to have been under consideration to lead the agency.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment about the whiteboard seen in D’Souza’s tweets, including a question about whether the office belonged to Bannon.

A press contact for D’Souza didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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