Page:CTRL0000034610 - Deposition of Keith Kellogg, Jr., (Dec. 14, 2021).pdf/18

18 Messaging.

Who was responsible for it was the President. The messaging all came from him.

Okay. So did he develop the messaging and pass it down to others in the White House to send out?

No. It was actually very collaborative, which a lot of people are probably surprised by it. For example, most of the time if he would put out a tweet, it was a collaborative effort.

Okay.

Where he would say something like Dan -- for Dan Scavino, let's say. He'd call Dan in and he'd say, "Dick and Jane ran up the hill." And he wouldn't like that. And somebody would say, "No, they ran down the hill or this." And they'd do several iterations of a tweet before it came out. But the messaging came from the President.

And then you always had -- many times, I wouldn't say all the time because I wasn't there all the time, but you had an ability for people to come into the room and say, "You don't want to say that," or, "Do you want to say this?" and, "This is what's happening."

But we all took our key from the President because he was the -- when you ask that question, the chief messenger, messenger, was the President. And then when we went through this Socratic or collaborative method, you would always have a chance to have input. You had an option. If you were in the room you were expected to speak. And you would say, "No, this is what I think we should say."

Now, nobody would always take your advice. But on several occasions people in the room were asked their opinion, and the implication was, well, if you don't have an opinion, you shouldn't be in the room.