Kellyanne Conway, newly-appointed Counselor to the President for Donald Trump, in an interview last November on Hannity, had this to say about her boss:
“Well, apart from the protective press pool questions, structurally, I think you're going to have a very unconventional presidency in Donald Trump because he's unconventional. He starts out as an outsider non-politician who's accustomed to building things, fixing things, delivering, producing. He's a guy who produces results, and that's what people want.”
The hallmark of this unconventionality is his use of Twitter. He literally tweeted his way into the White House. From the linked opinion piece: “I imagine researchers will study Trump’s campaign tactics for years to come. In fact, analyses of Twitter’s impact on the 2016 presidential election have already begun. The New York Times even recently cataloged all of the 'people, places, and things' Trump insulted on Twitter. Trump’s unconventional methods, originally ridiculed by traditional pundits as ineffective and sounding like a 'rushed, high-school term paper', thrived on Twitter’s quick and unfiltered universe. His campaign could test acerbic messages in near real-time with his followers and determine whether to continue them on the campaign trail.
“Traditional politicians looking to remain in office may discover that Trump’s unconventional rise has created a new normal for campaign strategies. Unsurprisingly, Twitter users whose posts get a lot of engagement through likes, retweets and replies post more frequently than users who do not. And research also shows that emotions on Twitter are contagious - both negative and positive tweets generate more of the same on the platform (with positive tweets being more contagious). As emotion played a role in this year’s political campaign, unlocking the secrets to wide and permanent dissemination will bode well for political candidates who harness the power of Twitter and other social media forms… at least until the next innovation comes along.”
On this past Sunday’s Meet the Press program, Rich Lowry of the National Review commented:
“I think everyone needs to get used to this. This is the new abnormal. And Trump is going to - he finds this very effective and emotionally gratifying form of communication. His supporters love it. When he lambastes his critics, especially when he tramples on what are taken to be conventions and pieties of our politics, which is that you don't hit back hard against John Lewis.”
Another participant, Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute stated:
“This is what works for Donald Trump. This is who he is. And to a large extent, we need to all think about how it is that the rest of the body politic in Washington reacts to this. If we all stand up and start screaming every time he drops a tweet, we're going to be very, very, very tired. Sorry, Jeff [Goldberg, of The Atlantic], the daily stuff-- at the end of the year. We need, we need to recognize that, first of all, not every tweet is policy.”
But does this tweeting constitute an inherent danger going forward into the Presidency? National security experts believe that foreign countries are already using Trump’s tweets to their advantage. They also worry about the risk that the tweets will be misunderstood:
“…140 characters often don’t leave space for much context, explanation or nuance. So what Trump writes may come across as more forthright and harsher than what foreign governments are accustomed to hearing in the diplomatic arena. The risk for a misunderstanding is, therefore, higher.”
And: “If Trump’s comments accurately reflect his intent, then we’re giving the opponents a head start in dealing with the incoming presidential administration,” a former U.S. intelligence officer said of Trump’s Twitter habits. “If his comments are meant to conceal other intentions, then we’re doing a pretty good job in misleading our adversaries.
“A foreign government may check to see if Trump uses certain types of words before he takes certain types of actions. If Trump keeps tweeting during his presidency, a foreign entity may analyze what types of things he writes before making a policy announcement.”
People took note back in 2008 when Barack Obama made extensive use of social media. It was called by some “the Facebook election”. Much was made of his two million Facebook followers, with 112,000 more on Twitter. Eight years later, Trump can boast having 20+ million Twitter followers.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton prided themselves in developing detailed and wide-ranging policies. However, their attempts at explaining them have, in my opinion, been a dismal failure. The substance of their messages always seemed to be sabotaged by the style of their delivery. I am convinced that many of President Obama’s carefully crafted speeches were met with disdain, and brushed off as lecturing. Clinton tried during the campaign to highlight the plight of workers thrown out of their jobs in the coal industry. She had a vision of the new approaches to addressing the issue, but her poorly-chosen words provided Donald Trump with more easily understood Twitter fodder.
Listening to Donald Trump’s speeches, I am always struck by the effectiveness of his delivery. The content is frequently lacking in specifics, but he hammers home his points by repeating them over and over. He pauses frequently to let his audience cheer. He fires up the emotions in them, even though he offers more hyperbole than substance. For example, he offered the hope of restoring jobs to the coal miners, when in reality it is well understood that the industry is dying.
Clearly the die has been cast for future elections. Truth and facts seem to have lost their currency. Fake news sites affect what information gets circulated, and by the time the source is debunked the damage is done. Some type of abbreviated social media communication tool will be more often used in place of fully researched articles.
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If Mr. Obama came to power in a time of great optimism for Twitter, Mr. Trump lords over a waning platform. What was once a hopeful place for global connection and resistance has become a site for coordinating harassment campaigns, connecting with white supremacists and accelerating unverified and sometimes dangerous rumors. Its growth has slumped and its stock price has stagnated.
If Mr. Obama came to power in a time of great optimism for Twitter, Mr. Trump lords over a waning platform. What was once a hopeful place for global connection and resistance has become a site for coordinating harassment campaigns, connecting with white supremacists and accelerating unverified and sometimes dangerous rumors. Its growth has slumped and its stock price has stagnated.
“But the place suits Mr. Trump’s purposes fine. For the guy who’s all about appearances, Twitter provides the veneer of populist connection without the hassle of accountability. Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s incoming press secretary, has suggested that Twitter town halls and Reddit forums may replace some typical presidential press interactions, where he can easily make himself available to anonymous fans instead of the scrutiny of the press. The social media platforms that were once heralded as democratic tools could also be used to undermine democratic norms.
“All of this works because one group is as intoxicated by Twitter as Mr. Trump is: journalists. It’s hard to explain to a normal person — one of the 79 percent of American adults who don’t use Twitter — why the platform mesmerizes the news media.
“Mr. Trump expertly exploits journalists’ unwavering attention to their Twitter feeds, their competitive spirit and their ingrained journalistic conventions — chiefly, that what the president says is inherently newsworthy. As a developer and reality show star, he lobbied the news media for coverage. Now journalists feel obligated to pay attention to him.”
Ironically, the press that so eagerly went along and supplied so much of the momentum for Trump, may be turned away from his administration:
“According to three senior officials on the transition team, a plan to evict the press corps from the White House is under serious consideration by the incoming Trump Administration. If the plan goes through, one of the officials said, the media will be removed from the cozy confines of the White House press room, where it has worked for several decades. Members of the press will be relocated to the White House Conference Center—near Lafayette Square—or to a space in the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House.
“Another senior official… suggested a more pointed motivation for the move. According to the official, the potential relocation reflected a view within the transition team that coverage of Trump has been so hostile as to indicate that the press has abandoned its role as neutral observer. ‘They are the opposition party. I want 'em out of the building. We are taking back the press room.’”
As a previously cited article noted, Twitter managed to become the favored tech of the day, enabling politics to be as close as the palms of our hands. Full credit must be given to Mr. Trump for harnessing it in his unconventional campaign with such effectiveness. I wonder what the new abnormal holds for our country and the world in his upcoming unconventional presidency.
D. Norman
He's babbling and we're getting very tired of it. His numbers are dropping and Justin Bieber has more than 4 times the number of Twits following him. The world is learning to ignore what he says because it's meaningless. But everybody's going to be looking at what he does, and will react accordingly.
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