Pay Attention to Trump’s Tweets-Policy and Polity
So what happens when he loses his blue checkmark for another rapey Mexicans comment? Next you know he will attack the Twitter CEO. Or anyone and everyone who calls him on his bullshit. Carrier, Boeing, or someday one of us here.
This week, President-elect Donald Trump pilloried Indiana union leader Chuck Jones on Twitter. The offense? Jones disputed exactly how many jobs Trump saved at the Carrier plant at which he works. That Trump aired grievances on social media is nothing new. That he so publicly targeted a private citizen very much is. Both the tweets and what followed—Jones received a barrage of calls and threats—highlight the unprecedented influence Trump can wield in 140 characters, and the dangers of shrugging them off.
In recent weeks, pundits have called on Americans to stop paying attention to Trump’s Twitter account. Their argument makes some sense: Trump is so good at using the medium that he often uses it to distract from “real news,” critics like media columnist Jack Shafer at Politico argue. They point to a recent weekend in which the New York Times published an investigation into Trump’s business conflicts, only to be drowned out by Trump’s conveniently timed alleging massive voter fraud in the popular vote. Trump, as Shafer put it, was yanking people’s chain. Last month, The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi called Trump’s Twitter account a “weapon of mass distraction.”
Twitter is Trump’s primary way of communicating with Americans. What he writes there matters.
That may be so. But it ignores that Twitter is also Trump’s primary way to communicate with Americans. He hasn’t given a press conference since July 27. What he writes on Twitter matters.
“Trump’s tweets could indeed be major policy pronouncements, given the way he has been using this medium,” says Shyam Sundar, co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University. Indeed, since his election, Trump’s tweets have influenced the financial markets (see his tweet about Boeing’s planes, which dinged the company’s stock price), ruffled the feathers of our closest allies (see his tweet urging Great Britain to appoint Nigel Farage as Ambassador to the US), and brought death threats to the president and professors of small liberal arts colleges (see his tweet remonstrating Hampshire College after someone on campus burned an American flag).
More: Sorry America, You Have to Pay Attention to Trump’s Tweets