Since winning the presidential election, Donald Trump has reportedly skipped out on most his intelligence briefings; and last Sunday, he made headlines after sharing false information blaming his loss of the popular vote on mass voter fraud - a claim previously reported by the conspiracy news site Infowars.  

It's been widely reported that Trump is an obsessive consumer of cable news, and he has himself admitted to receiving at least a portion of his military advice from "the shows." But, pundits and chyrons aside, relatively little is known about where the next president will find the news and commentary that might color his time in office.

What we know of Trump's relationship to the modern internet suggests the president-elect rarely browses it himself. Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks told GQ he relies largely on Google News printouts from staffers and sparingly reads his own email. And a 2007 deposition suggests that Trump doesn't use a computer or carry a smartphone during the daytime hours, and often dictates daytime tweets to his assistants.

WHAT EXACTLY IS TRUMP'S MEDIA DIET?    To find this out, BuzzFeed News reviewed 26,234 of 34,062 tweets sent from Trump's personal Twitter account from 6/1/16 (month he announced his candidacy) and 11/17/16.  BuzzFeed filtered that data down to the 2,687 hyperlinks tweeted by Trump, and by programmatically expanding the shortened links in his tweets they were able to generate a rudimentary portrait of the news and opinion he publicizes and, presumably, consumes.

The news stories Trump tweets share several characteristics:  (i) they often favor sensationalism over facts and reporting; (ii) they frequently echo direct quotes from Trump himself or his closest advisers; and, (iii) they routinely malign his enemies and vindicate his most controversial opinions.

During campaign season Trump shared more Breitbart links in his tweets than any other news organization. While his 2^nd most shared site during the time period analyzed was the Washington Post - Trump's preferred content seems to be right-leaning, hyper-partisan sites and opinion blogs including: Daily Caller (21 links), Newsmax (18), the Gateway Pundit (14 links), the Conservative Treehouse (11), the Political Insider (1), Conservative Tribune (1), Infowars (1), newsninja2012.com (5), and westernjournalism.com (1). Trump's Twitter account also shares links from a number of obscure personal blogs, like agent54nsa.blogspot.com, which hosted a joke post about a fake game show about Monica Lewinsky hosted by a character named "Stink Fartinmale."

CUT TO THE CHASE.    While BuzzFeed provides extensive discussion on its analysis and observations, Financialish.com 'cuts to the chase' and concludes that Trump apparently justifies the news reports on which he bases his tweets or retweets on a simple fact: that they had were posted to the internet by significant numbers of people, and “public perception” is not only an easy basis for authenticity or legitimacy, but it also offers him an easy out when it comes to disassociating himself from criticism when the content is revealed as outright lies and exaggerations.

[Clink link for much more detail.]