5/16/2023 0 Comments Tweetadder reviewElsewhere, he asks: “Why did promote the ‘Arab Spring’?” and claims that Hillary Clinton has been permitted to “get away with ‘murder’”. They contributed to the idea that he was a real guy, a contrarian and bold truth-teller, instead of a cowed creature of Washington.Ĭertainly he is a master of the form in its darkest guise: along the way, he began using the inverted commas he is now known for, casting doubt on whatever he turned his attention to – as in the above tweet about Obama’s birthplace. Trump added: “A great compliment!” Oborne and Roberts note, affectlessly: “Trump takes the accusation of being a troll as a compliment.”ĭuring his presidential campaign, Trump fired off midnight salvos that would have embarrassed any other candidate, but seemed to redound to his benefit. His narcissism flourished: in 2014, he wrote “Happy Anniversary to my wonderful wife – a truly great decision by me!” In 2013, he retweeted a stranger who had pronounced him “the most superior troll on the whole of twitter”. When journalist Lawrence O’Donnell was critical of him on MSNBC in th same year, he lashed out: “See your psychiatrist immediately, you need help.” And he found the platform the perfect place to spread vicious rumours and conspiracy theories about President Obama, writing, in November 2011: “Made in America? called his ‘birthplace’ Hawaii ‘here in Asia’.”Įven his wedding anniversary is turned into self-congraultation: ‘A truly great decision by me!’ Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images Twitter exacerbated some of Trump’s confrontational and self-inflating tendencies by 2011, he’d become a maestro of Twitter vendettas. It was snowing in New York in October – “So much for Global Warming”. He contended that Americans shouldn’t go to Italy because Amanda Knox is “totally innocent”. It will be spectacular!” he wrote on 1 July 2010. “Work is expected to begin today on my golf course in Scotland. One imagines the transformation – thumbs sore, synapses firing, exclamation points flying. (“Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman as he presents the Top Ten List tonight!” the very first tweet reads.) But soon he “found his voice” and began tweeting from his phone. In the early days, assistants or a PR team posted Trump’s tweets for him. A marketing expert had told him it was a useful platform for boosting sales of his latest book. Trump joined Twitter about three years after it launched. F or Trump, the endorphin jolts of all those tweets, likes and retweets seem to have been acting like a drug, promoting his belief that he really was qualified to lead the country. Trump may also have meant something else by what he told Fox News: he wouldn’t be president without Twitter, because the platform offered him immediate gratification when he posted about politics. In this way, the man was made for the medium, the medium for the man. Twitter, as medium, let Trump voice “raw sentiment instantly, without nuance or subtext”. Indeed the most significant aspect of his populism, they contend, was “the reinvention of political communication through Twitter”. It enabled him to appeal directly to a modern-day “silent majority” fed up with both political parties, while trading on his celebrity and supposed business skills. In an introduction that usefully seeks to historicise his success, Oborne and Roberts argue that Twitter helped Trump, who had long toyed with running for president, bring populism back to the forefront in the United States, mobilising disgruntled citizens against the Washington establishment. “I might not be here talking to you right now as president if I didn’t have an honest way of getting the word out.” “I think that maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter,” Trump told Fox News in a recent interview. More seriously the question here is whether Twitter can tell us anything about the former TV celebrity-turned-demagogue.
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