Donald Trump Desperately Wants His Twitter Account
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Pleads the court to give his toy back
When I read Presidential Historian Bob Woodward’s ‘Rage’, one of the things that got stuck in my head was the passage where Trump called himself the “Social Media President”.
It was a brutally honest assessment by the former president. Donald Trump would have never become the 45th President of the United States without Facebook and Twitter granting him the amplifier.
Social media gave Trump the tools he needed to inject steroids into his messages, stir up controversy, and force the entire world to drink his unlimited vitriol.
Facebook allowed him to identify and isolate people into exploitable groups, while Twitter carried his voice to every nook and corner of the world.
Take his ‘Build The Wall’ campaign for example. Had he launched his presidential bid in 2000 centered around immigration control, Trump would have dropped out after the first primary debate.
Social media allowed Trump to find people fearful of immigration. Trump campaign and his allies used his build the wall theme to take money from people who feared immigrants and then used the money to find more people who shared the same fear.
Once you identify and isolate people into online clusters, it becomes easy to target them. Increase their fear and anxiety to a level that makes them coming back for more. Make money out of their misery and convert them into reliable vote banks.
Such a strategy would have been impossible to execute in 2000 when communication lines remained localized and data had to run through national media before they were delivered at the doorsteps. But deployment became fairly easy in 2016.
Donald Trump became who he is today because of social media. He feels stranded without his Twitter and Facebook accounts.
