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Trump’s Top Ten (un)Presidential Tweets
Donald Trump’s love affair with Twitter is renowned. Since he joined the platform in March 2009, he has tweeted tens of thousands of times, with at least 17,000 of these coming after his 2015 announcement that he would seek the presidency. Trump’s Twitter feed has been a place to boast, an arena to engage in feuds with celebrities and political opponents, a means to threaten foreign nations, and a venue to advertise his political beliefs. Perhaps most importantly, Twitter allowed Trump to reach out to his base directly, without intrusion from what he would surely consider to be the poisoning mediation of mainstream news outlets.
Through Twitter, Trump could reach the people without ever having to worry about those pesky journalists who might seek to add context to his rants. Furthermore, his tweets served as a distraction tactic, diverting attention away from any subject matter that could potentially damage him politically. Research has shown that this strategy works, with his tweets often successfully shifting media coverage away from potentially harmful topics.
Whilst Twitter may have proved highly useful for Donald Trump, the love-affair had undoubtedly turned sour by the end of his presidency. In the summer of 2020, when Trump unleashed his conspiracy about the mail-in-ballots being fraudulent, Twitter began placing fact-checking tags on his…
