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Donald Trump loved Twitter during his first term. He is now squared with Twitter owner Elon Musk.
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Does that mean Twitter will be important in a second Trump office?
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Probably! But remember that Trump used Twitter as an output device, not an input device. That could restrict her influence over him.
Donald Trump will be president again. Elon Musk, one of its biggest sponsors, owns Twitter.
Does this mean that Twitter is going to be more important in the Trump 2.0 era?
Probably?
But we won’t know as Twitter, which Musk has renamed X, will be important for some time.
It was interesting, for example, to watch the campaign for the next Senate majority leader on Twitter over the weekend, with conservative leaders including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk weighing in on the platform, as well as Musk and Trump.
By the way, that fight still continues. Here was Kirk on Monday morning, trying to rally the troops for US Senator Rick Scott:
Breaking: Word has spread that senators are lining up their support. However, DC experts are reportedly working around the clock behind the environment.
Americans are calling for Rick Scott to take over as Senate Majority Leader, not the same old political establishment. 🇺🇸🇺🇸
DO IT…
– Charlie Kirk 🇺🇸 NOTICIAS (@CharlieKNews) November 11, 2024
And, as a slight, it seems obvious to conclude that as long as Musk is aligned with Trump, Twitter users will see a lot of content on Twitter that supports Trump. As both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported (and many people can see it with their own eyes), Twitter has already given a free pass to the right under Musk’s ownership. And obviously, many people in the Trump camp are also avid Twitter users, starting with Musk himself.
But the big question I’m thinking about now is pretty simple: Does Donald Trump know, or care, what’s happening on Twitter?
Trump famously loved Twitter during his first term. But he wasn’t hardcore about it like many of us are: constantly looking for things to anger, delight, or distract. Instead, he was using it like a remote control: to program media coverage and effectiveness itself.
Here’s Trump in 2019, talking to Fox News about the way he used Twitter:
I destroyed bills that were going to be voted on that were bad, and I managed to pass bills that were good using Twitter. And Twitter is effectively a typewriter for me. It’s not really Twitter, it’s Twitter appearing on television, or if they have breaking news, I’ll tweet and say, “Look at this, prosperity.” I made the Golan Heights to Israel and posted it on Twitter. If I publish a press release, no one will see it. Today’s Huawei, I posted it on Twitter, the family sees it. That’s not building Twitter. That is to say, as soon as it comes out, it goes on television, on Facebook, everywhere and it is instantaneous; For me, it is indeed a modern way of communicating.
But look at who Trump was talking to in that interview: Fox News.
Trump 1.0 was a president who understood that digital media was important. But it was in the presence of quite a president that he achieved the majority of durability in the 1970s and 1980s, and his media diet reflected that: printed newspapers and magazines, in which he scribbled notes using a counter. And, above all: television.
Trump was the president of television.
Trump was transfixed by television, and that meant that television was the most important medium during his first presidency. If you wanted to communicate with the president, the popular wisdom was that you did it by appearing on television because you knew he would see it there. Fox News in particular.
That was four years ago and, since then, the television landscape has continued to bleed rooms and audiences. Ratings for last week’s election were down 25% from 2020. New media and platforms like podcasts, YouTube and TikTok are booming, and Trump and his campaign spent a lot of time and effort there.
So is it possible that Trump, who is approaching 80 and played songs from 1978 at his rallies, has also changed his media diet?
I want to comment, right? I suppose it’s conceivable that he went to Theo Von’s podcast/YouTube software because he’s a big Theo Von fan.
My hunch, however, is that you’re getting information like you always have: by watching and reading Old Media. And, as The New York Times reports, when asking whoever is in their field right now:
“Mr. Trump, who is a mix of opposing impulses, is also doing what he always does: yelling at friends and associates and asking them who they think he should appoint.”
And to be clear, what happens on Twitter (or any other online surface) can greatly influence how people who influence Trump think. But even they pay attention to television, or at least television clips on the Internet.
Musk, for example, spent part of Sunday using Twitter to mutter “Saturday Night Live,” just as Trump used to do. “They are so angry that @realDonaldTrump won,” he wrote, adding:
SNL has been slowly dying for years, as they become more and more out of touch with effectiveness.
His later effort to circumvent equal time requirements and prop up Kamala before the election only helped sink his campaign further. @nbcsnl
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 10, 2024
I am very cautious about looking at Trump 2016-2020 and confidently projecting that the next four years will be the same. But I would be surprised if Donald Trump, the little guy on television, becomes Donald Trump, the little guy on Twitter.
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