Social Media Use By Donald Trump

Donald Trump's use of social media attracted attention worldwide since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers. On November 19, 2022, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated his account.

For most of Trump's presidency, his account on Twitter, where he often posted controversial and false statements, remained unmoderated in the name of "public interest". Congress performed its own form of moderation: on July 16, 2019, the House of Representatives voted mostly along party lines to censure him for "racist comments" he had tweeted two days previously. In the face of this political censure, his tweets only accelerated. An investigation by ''The New York Times'' published November 2, 2019, found that, during his time in office to date, Trump had already retweeted at least 145 accounts that "have pushed conspiracy or fringe content, including more than two dozen that have since been suspended." In 2020, Trump also spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

During his 2020 reelection campaign, he falsely suggested that postal voting or electoral fraud may compromise the election, prompting Twitter to either remove such tweets or label them as disputed. After his election loss, Trump persistently undermined the election results in the weeks leading to Joe Biden's inauguration. His tweets played a role in inciting the January 6, 2021, attack of the US Capitol during the formal counting of electoral votes. Though the Senate eventually acquitted Trump during his second impeachment, social media companies swiftly banned him. Facebook and Instagram announced a permanent ban (although, in June 2021, they said they would revisit the ban in January 2023). Twitter permanently suspended his @realDonaldTrump handle, followed by the official account of his campaign (@TeamTrump) and the accounts of allies who posted on his behalf, like Trump campaign digital director Gary Coby. Twitter also deleted three tweets by Trump on the @POTUS handle and barred access to the presidential account until Joe Biden's inauguration. During the first week that Trump was banned on several platforms (January 9–15), election-related misinformation declined 73 percent, according to research analytics firm Zignal Labs.

As Trump continued to issue brief statements, his spokesperson Liz Harrington tweeted screenshots of them under the Save America logo from June 2021 to June 2022. Since then, however, her Twitter handle @realLizUSA has been infrequently used. She said she would move to Truth Social, a Trump-affiliated social media application that launched on February 21, 2022.

Background

The emergence of social media has changed the way in which political communication takes place in the United States. Political institutions such as politicians, political parties, foundations, institutions, and political think tanks are all using social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, to communicate with and engage voters. Regular individuals, politicians, " pundits" and thought leaders alike are able to voice their opinions, engage with a wide network, and connect with other likeminded individuals. According to Wael Ghonim, social media can reinforce pre-existing beliefs rather than promote new ones. Social media, while a great source of gathering volunteers and money, serves the main purpose of affirming political beliefs and strengthening a political base. Politicians have a platform to communicate with that is different from the mainstream media. Politicians have the ability to raise large amounts of money in relatively short periods of time through social media campaigns. In 2012, President Barack Obama raised over a billion dollars for his campaign, which broke the fundraising record. Around $690 million was raised through online donations including social media, email, and website donations, and more money was raised from small donors than ever before.

The 2008 US presidential election was the first election in which candidates utilized the Internet and social media networking as a communicative tool incorporated into candidates' campaigns. In 2008, President-elect Barack Obama was the first to use the Internet to organize supporters, advertise, and communicate with individuals in a way that had been impossible in previous elections. Obama utilized sites like YouTube to advertise through videos. The videos posted on YouTube by Obama's were viewed for 14.5 million hours.
, more candidates were utilizing a wider array of social media platforms. Politicians were now on social networking sites like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other new social media tools and mobile apps. Some of the candidates used social media sites to announce their candidacy. Barack Obama emailed a video to 13 million when he announced his intention to run for re-election, and Mitt Romney sent out a tweet.
By May 16, 2011, @BarackObama was followed by 7.4 million people, including twenty-eight world leaders. His account became the third account to reach 10 million followers in September 2011.

Twitter

From his official declaration of candidacy in 2015, Donald Trump benefited from large numbers of supporters active on social media. Some supporters called themselves "Centipedes" online.

As president, Trump preferred to communicate over social media, announcing policy changes and the dismissals of staff members there. Trump largely bypassed the White House Press Secretary, and his administration ended the daily White House press briefing. Trump preferred "to dictate and dominate the news cycle"; his communications emphasized his political grievances, promoted conspiracy theories, and attacked those he regarded as enemies.

Trump used the retweet feature on Twitter to forward messages he agreed with (often posts praising him), no matter how obscure their authors were. At times, Trump retweeted himself, and sometimes commented "so true" while doing so.

Followers

The @realdonaldtrump handle had amassed 88.7 million followers by the time Twitter suspended it in January 2021 after the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

When Trump announced his presidential campaign in 2015, he had 2.98 million followers; his follower count thereafter increased rapidly.Rachel Lerman
Trump says Twitter is trying to 'silence' conservatives. His growing number of followers suggests otherwise.
''The Washington Post'' (May 28, 2020). Many of his followers, however, were fake accounts and Twitter bots: a May 2017 analysis concluded that, of the then-30.9 million followers of Trump's personal Twitter account, 51 percent were real and 49 percent were fake. In mid-2018, Twitter conducted a site-wide crackdown on fake accounts, reducing the total number of users of the site by about 6 percent;Emily Stewart
What's up with Twitter's follower counts, explained for everyone — including Trump
''Vox'' (April 24, 2019). as a result, Trump lost about 100,000 of his then-53.4 million followers. Trump repeatedly complained about reductions in the number of followers, claiming that Twitter was biased against him, and raised his complaints in tweets and in a private meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.Trump complains about Twitter removing his followers
Agence France-Presse. Via Phys.org (October 26, 2018). In October 2018, the research group SparkToro estimated that more than 6 percent of Trump's followers were "bots, spam, inactive or propaganda"—a significantly higher percentage than for followers of other American politician Twitter accounts.

Public opinion

Trump's advisors warned him that his tweets may alienate some of his supporters. In a June 2017 Fox News poll, 70 percent of respondents said Trump's tweets hurt his agenda. In a January 2019 UMass Lowell poll, 68 percent of all respondents aged 18–37 said Trump tweeted too much.

Rate of tweets

In November 2016, shortly after winning the election, Trump said in a '' 60 Minutes'' interview that, as president, his use of social media would be "very restrained, if I use it at all." Trump went on to Tweet more than 25,000 times during his presidency; by the first half of 2019, he was tweeting as frequently as he had as a candidate, and he doubled this rate during the second half of 2019 and the first half of 2020. On his most prolific day, June 5, 2020, he tweeted 200 times.

Tweets counted through Trump Twitter Archive.

In addition to the tweets he put out, he was also the intended recipient of tweets by others. In 2019, Donald Trump was tagged on Twitter at a rate of 1,000 times per minute, according to ''The New York Times.''

Device security

After the inauguration, the White House would not comment on whether Trump was using a secure phone.

Before, he had been using a Samsung Galaxy S3 which only has Android 4.3.1 as its latest OS, a version of Android which Google marked as unsupported and discontinued as of Trump's inauguration. Since then, he has used an iPhone to use Twitter.

The iPhone Twitter app used by Trump in 2018 lacked certain security features, and ''Politico'' reported in May 2018 that Trump's phone "has gone as long as five months" without being checked by security experts.

On October 24, 2018, ''The New York Times'' reported that Trump was still using his personal iPhones for phone calls, even though his aides and US intelligence officials have warned him that Russian and Chinese spies are listening. Trump responded by tweeting: "I only use Government Phones." The tweet was sent from an iPhone. (In the same tweet, he claimed that he has only ''one'' such government phone and that it is "seldom used.")

Trump's @realDonaldTrump Twitter account was breached twice by Dutch hacker Victor Gevers, both times by guessing weak passwords. The first incident took place in 2016, using the guessed password "yourefired". The password was guessed because it had previously been discovered in a 2012 LinkedIn password breach. The second incident took place in October 2020, when his account was breached by guessing the password "maga2020!". Although reports of the second attack were denied by Twitter and the White House, they were later confirmed by Dutch prosecutors in December 2020.

Tweets as official statements

Throughout his presidency, Trump frequently appeared to issue orders through his tweets. Whether these tweets were official directives was unclear. A US National Archives spokesman said that Trump's tweets are considered presidential records.

In 2017, the Department of Justice argued in one court case that Trump's tweets were "official statements of the President of the United States." In another case, the DOJ argued they were official policy statements but that the tweets were also "personal conduct that is not an exercise of state power." The ''ABA Journal'' wrote in 2017, "There's little caselaw on to what extent government use of social media can be considered official or a 'public forum,' which affords First Amendment protection to people who might be excluded based on their viewpoints."

In 2019, the Secretary of the US Navy said he did not interpret a Trump tweet as a "formal order to act" after Trump tweeted that the Navy should not take away Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher's status as a Navy SEAL.

In 2020, a court asked that Trump clarify his intention after he tweeted what appeared to be an order calling for the disclosure of documents related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. In a court filing White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said that: "The President indicated to me that his statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and do not require the declassification or release of any particular documents."

Timeline

In 2009, marketing staffer Peter Costanzo suggested to Trump that he could use social media to draw attention to his book, '' Think Like a Champion'', which was due to be released later that year. He was unable to use the username @DonaldTrump, as it was already being used by a parody account. He and his marketing team decided to use the username @realDonaldTrump. Trump joined Twitter in March 2009 and sent out his first tweet on May 4, 2009, advertising his upcoming appearance on the '' Late Show with David Letterman'', which was due to air a couple of days later.

From 2009 to 2011, tweets posted by the @realDonaldTrump account included the phrase "from Donald Trump" to distinguish them from those written by his staff, but by about June 2011, as Trump's use of the platform increased, those identifying labels disappeared. During the 2016 campaign, some tweets were sent from an Android phone, and others from an iPhone. The Android tweets were more likely to be sent outside of business hours and to take a more combative tone. The iPhone tweets were suspected to be written and sent by members of Trump's staff, a suspicion that was largely confirmed using sentiment analysis; machine learning and natural language processing could still frequently distinguish Trump's tweets from others sent in his name, even when staffers attempted to emulate his writing style.

In 2012, following the victory of Obama in the presidential election, Trump tweeted a chain of disparaging comments about Obama's win. He mocked Obama for playing basketball and blamed the Chinese for creating "the concept of global warming". Trump tweeted the next day, "but we'll have to live with it!" and: "We have to make America great again!" In response, Obama sarcastically quipped on ''The Tonight Show With Jay Leno'': "This all dates back to when e and Trumpwere growing up together in Kenya," referring to the birther conspiracy.

Trump's Twitter activity significantly increased beginning in 2013; he tweeted more frequently and with more politically charged rhetoric.

Twitter was an important tool in Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign, and has been credited as contributing to his victory. Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci recalled that Trump: "felt that there was no separation between his brand and the media, that there was an intersection of value for himself personally between his brand and saturating it in the media". Daniel Pfeiffer, Obama's former strategy communications advisor, commented that Trump is: "way better at the internet than anyone else in the GOP which is partly why he is winning". According to ''The New York Times'', other presidential aides have described Trump "as a sophisticated version of a parrot, given his penchant for repeating information almost unfiltered, as soon as he had processed it."

In 2017, Trump was described as "possibly the first 'social media' and 'reality TV' president" in an article by Van Jones on CNN's website in October 2017. Following Trump's inauguration, he gained control of the official US presidential Twitter account (@POTUS), which had been created by Obama. Trump's first tweets as president were made from his personal account, but he has used both accounts. After Joe Biden won the November 2020 presidential election, Twitter said it planned to hand over the @POTUS account to Biden upon his inauguration on January 20, 2021, which has since happened.

Live-tweeting ''Fox & Friends''

Trump frequently watched the Fox News show ''Fox & Friends'' and often tweeted reactions to what he has seen on the show. For example, on January 2, 2018, Trump tweeted that his "Nuclear Button" was "much bigger & more powerful" than Kim Jong-un's, following a Fox News segment about Kim's "nuclear button" minutes before. Trump watches several hours of cable news shows each day, using the "Super TiVo" he had installed at the White House. News organizations have compiled lists of Trump tweets directly repeating what he was watching. The result is that stories that Fox concentrates on become nationally important stories by virtue of the fact that they appear in presidential tweets, setting up a feedback loop. During his first year in office, he mentioned the ''Fox & Friends'' Twitter account more than any other account.

Insults

In January 2016, a review by ''The New York Times'' found that one in every eight posts by Trump on Twitter "was a personal insult of some kind". From the beginning of his term until May 2019, Trump had insulted 598 people (including private citizens), places, and things on Twitter; targets of insults included politicians, journalists, news outlets, television hosts and programs, former staffers and associates, government agencies, business leaders, books critical of him, the State of California and State of New York, and entire countries. ''The New York Times'' published an inventory of all of Trump's Twitter insults from 2015 until January 2021.

Trump often gave opponents nicknames such as "Crooked Hillary" and "Lyin' Ted". In 2015, he tweeted against an 18-year-old college student who had challenged him at a New Hampshire political forum, which led to a wave of online harassment against her. In December 2016, as president-elect, he responded to criticism from the president of United Steelworkers Local 1999 in Indiana by tweeting that the local union leader "has done a terrible job representing workers"; the union president received threatening phone calls afterward.

International threats

2017–2019 Qatar diplomatic crisis

In 2017, the Qatar diplomatic crisis erupted. An escalation of the Qatar–Saudi Arabia diplomatic conflict, it began when Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt abruptly cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar, alleging that the Qatari government supported terrorists. The severing of relations included withdrawing ambassadors, and imposing trade and travel bans. In a series of tweets, Trump praised the Gulf nations' move against Qatar, took credit for engineering the crisis, and repeatedly criticized Qatar, undermining simultaneous efforts by Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, US Ambassador to Qatar Dana Shell Smith, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, all of whom took a neutral stance, called for dialogue and compromise in the interests of regional security, and noted that Qatar hosted the Al Udeid Air Base.

Threat to destroy North Korea

In September 2017, Trump posted tweets about North Korea that some saw as violating Twitter's rule against making threats of violence. On September 19, he stated that under certain circumstances, "we will have no choice but to totally destroy #NoKo", and on September 23, "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!" ("Little Rocket Man" was Trump's nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un). In response to user concerns, Twitter cited newsworthiness and whether the tweet is of public interest as factors they consider in whether a tweet violates their rules. The company acknowledged that these guidelines are internal, and stated they would update their public-facing rules to reflect them.

Threat to destroy Iran's cultural sites

On January 4, 2020, Trump threatened in a tweet that "if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets," it could expect that "52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago)...important to Iran & the Iranian culture" would be "HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD." Deliberately targeting cultural sites would have been a war crime. The next day, he tweeted: "Should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner."

Sharing of violent, far-right, and extremist content

Trump has been criticized for his practice of retweeting or copying material from social media accounts posting antisemitic, racist, or false information, such as claims exaggerating the number of crimes committed by black people.

During campaign

PolitiFact singled out as particularly obviously false an image retweeted by Trump that claimed that 81 percent of white murder victims are killed by black people. Politifact noted that, besides being a five-fold exaggeration, the claim was sourced to the non-existent "Crime Statistics Bureau, San Francisco"; it later highlighted this retweet when awarding its 2015 "Lie of the Year" badge to Trump's entire presidential campaign. The fake statistics were first posted by a neo-Nazi Twitter account.

An image posted by Trump on July 2, 2016, called Hillary Clinton the "Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!" and featured a six-pointed star reminiscent of the Jewish Star of David; the image first appeared in a June 15 tweet by @FishBoneHead1, a Twitter account described by the Associated Press as being known for "anti-Clinton and right-leaning messages and images" and by '' Mic'' as promoting "violent, racist memes," before making its way to 8chan's /pol/ on June 22. Trump's social media manager Dan Scavino responded that the image had been sourced by him from a Twitter page "where countless images appear" and that he had assumed that the star referred to a sheriff's badge. Under two hours later, the tweet was deleted from Trump's account in favor of a nearly identical tweet with a circle in place of the star, but Trump later blamed the deletion on his staff, stating: "I would've rather defended it." Jeremy Diamond of CNN observed: "It wasn't the six-pointed star alone that evoked anti-Semitism – it's the combination of the star with a background of money and an accusation of corruption, which suggests stereotypical views of Jews and money and raises conspiracy theories that Jews control political systems." The episode led Dana Schwartz, a Jewish employee of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, to write an open letter to him in protest, to which he responded.

CNN wrestling video

On July 2, 2017, Trump tweeted a video of himself attacking Vince McMahon during WrestleMania 23 with the CNN logo over McMahon's face. In response, Brian Stelter of CNN issued a statement saying that Trump was "encouraging violence against reporters" and "involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office". CNN also responded to the tweet by quoting Sarah Huckabee Sanders who claimed the previous week "The president in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence." Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert said that "no one would perceive he tweetas a threat." Trump subsequently said that CNN took the post too seriously, adding that CNN has "hurt themselves very badly".

The clip appeared on pro-Trump subreddit, r/The Donald, about four days earlier, and was created by a Reddit account which had previously posted racist, antisemitic and bigoted content. A White House official later denied that the video came from Reddit; the official declined "to respond to questions about where the president obtained the clip." , the tweet had been retweeted over 330,000 times, making it Trump's most retweeted post.

Britain First videos

On November 29, 2017, Trump retweeted three inflammatory and unverified anti-Muslim videos from Britain First, a British far-right and ultranationalist group that has a history of posting misleading videos. One of the videos purported to show an assault by a Muslim immigrant, but the assailant was neither a Muslim nor an immigrant. Another video was filmed in 2013 during the Syrian Civil War, showing a man, who is believed to be an Al-Nusra supporter, destroying a statue of Mary and stating: "No-one but Allah will be worshipped in the land of the Levant." A third video contains footage filmed during a period of violent unrest following the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état. The videos had been shared by Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen

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