His public persona was a product of television for decades.
Through “The Apprentice” he built a fantastic version of himself as the CEO of a global business empire and a self-made billionaire. His match-style combat rallies helped him dominate television during the 2016 presidential campaign. Always aware of the way he played and the power of ratings, he personally chose the presenters he wanted. interviewed him and persuaded the hosts to allow him to simply phone their Sunday shows.
But as his campaign unfolded and his presidency began, Donald J. Trump, the master of the small screen, gradually evolved into a different character, @realdonaldtrump, whose irritating Twitter finger became a lot to at the same time: an agenda for the day. blanket, a weapon against his rivals, a way to shoot assistants and cabinet secretaries, a grenade he could throw at Republican lawmakers who had passed him and journalists whose blanket he hated, a window to his psyche , and most importantly, an unfiltered pipeline to its supporters.
Now that his Twitter account has been permanently ripped from him, President Trump faces the challenge, both for his remaining days in the White House and in a post-presidency, to jump into the conversation on his own terms.
He spent the first weekend of his presidency without his Twitter account through rage and acceptance, finally telling people he was fine without it. He argued that being “silenced” would exasperate his supporters.
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Even without Twitter, and even under a new threat of impeachment, Mr. Trump remains until January 20 the most powerful man in the world, with access to the White House briefing room, the East Room and the office. oval to communicate thoughts. He has a press office dedicated to publishing his statements and a group of journalists assigned to cover what he says and does.
But while his presidency has often been compared to a reality TV show, Mr. Trump has personally distanced himself from the medium that made him become the celebrity he was before he ran for office and propelled him. to the White House.
Trump’s allies – and Mr. Trump himself – have condemned Twitter’s move, describing it as the removal of his free speech rights.
“As I have said for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight Twitter employees coordinated with Democrats and the radical left to remove my account from. their platform, to silence me – and YOU, the 75 million great patriots who voted for me, “the president said in a statement on Friday, saying that he and his collaborators had” negotiated with various other sites “.
Yet by not using the tools a president has at his disposal, including public appearances or interviews for most of the past two months, Mr. Trump has in some ways chosen to muzzle himself.
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Over the years of his presidency, as controversies and investigations into his conduct began to grow, television became a less reliable safe space. The broadcast networks, in a hurry to be more aggressive in their approach to him and his collaborators, asked more difficult questions. With the exception of Fox News, the cable networks that had rushed to put him on air throughout 2016 and the early stages of his presidency have tightened, including reducing the broadcast of his live appearances.
The presidential transition
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And his adventures in the White House briefing room did not generally go well and exposed the limits of his understanding of politics or current affairs. A Trump adviser has been outspoken, saying the president doesn’t like most aspects of his job, and that involved being asked questions he didn’t know the answers to.
So when Mr. Trump went into the briefing room for weeks in the spring to discuss the coronavirus, advisers said, he liked the visual aspects of his performance but not the reality of having a back-and-forth that led him to be condemned and ridiculed for his dangerous statements about fighting the virus with bleach and light and his blunt assertions that everything is better.
Twitter became a stage he could handle more closely.
It was telling that throughout his tenure, Mr. Trump chose his @realdonaldtrump account as his primary Twitter channel, not his official @Potus account. He understood the power to build his personal brand and separate it from his official duties as president. Twitter gave him a singular outlet to express himself as he is, unfiltered by presidency standards.
He was scrolling through his own Twitter feed, looking at replies for new topics to throw away. He studied Twitter’s trending lists as signals of the direction of speech.
In a way, television became the medium through which he could watch the effects of his tweets.
The television in her alcove dining room next to the Oval Office was usually lit in the background, catnip for its brief attention span. He consumed much of her information through her and looked at the coverage of her tweets.
Trump’s White House aides have said he loves to tweet and then watch the chyrons on cable news channels change quickly in response. For a 70-year-old whose closest allies and helpers say he often exhibits the emotional development of a preteen, and for whom the attention has been astonishing, the instant gratification of his tweets was hard to match.
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The advisers insisted they were still exploring the possibility of another platform where the president could speak without a filter.
But for now, Mr. Trump has been forced to adopt a more traditional presidential communications posture, dependent on the need to organize events with a visual flair in the hope of attracting television coverage. That’s what he plans to do on Tuesday with a trip to the southwest border to promote what he says is progress in fulfilling his pledge to build a wall there.
And with all the outrage and drama he sparked in the final chapter of his presidency, Mr. Trump could still take the opportunity to schedule one last major appearance before stepping down.
Jason Miller, Trump’s senior adviser, said if Mr. Trump gave such an address it would force TV networks to make a difficult choice: follow Twitter to silence the president or allow him to speak to the American people.
“I would say to many members of the media, be careful what you wish for,” Miller said.
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