THE one thing I assumed would stop when Trump became President in January was his use of Twitter.

His use of the platform had been a factor in achieving his surprise 2016 win, using it to pass the traditional media to appeal directly to his base support.

Initially it had been a source of amusement for the American media, but by the end of the campaign Trump was firing out an average of seven tweets a day in his efforts to be elected.

Many of them were of course in capital letters, slamming the fake news media.

Many assumed his Twitter use would decline when he took office but, in fact, President Trump has tweeted a similar amount to when he was running as a candidate – more, at certain times.

All of this has become a massive problem. Trump’s feed is full of 140-character outbursts and his tweets now set the daily news agenda in the US.

If you read through them, many take an aggressive tone and are all designed to appeal to his loyal supporters.

This has got to the stage where it has become dangerous though – the perfect example being the growing North Korea crisis.

On Sunday, he tweeted: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN.

“If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer.” Instead of careful rhetoric to help secure a peaceful solution, instead Trump’s tweets were seen as “declaring war”, with North Korea later threatening to shoot down US planes in international airspace.

Some campaigned for Twitter to delete the tweets, as making violent threats is breaking their terms of conditions – the company refusing to do so, saying they are in the public interest.

The bottom line is it is simply not presidential to be handling a diplomatic crisis in this way. All Trump is doing is making a volatile situation worse.

Let us all hope right now that it is just posturing from North Korea leader Kim Jong-un and Trump, as the alternative is not worth thinking about.

It is scary game the pair are playing and that in essence is the problem – Trump sees Twitter as an effective tool in his bigger political game.