Did you know? The Patriot Post is funded 100% by its readers. Help us stay front and center in the fight for Liberty and support the 2024 Patriots' Day Campaign.

December 14, 2017

Why Trump Should Consider a Post-Twitter Presidency

In sum, Trump has outgrown the Twitter wars. He should now just declare victory and retire as Twitter champ.

Almost every supposedly informed prediction about President Donald Trump’s compulsive Twitter addiction has so far proved wrong.

He did not tweet his way out of the Republican nomination. Spontaneous social media messaging did not lose Trump the general election race with Hillary Clinton. Nor has Trump tweeted his presidency into oblivion.

Instead, Trump’s tweets have not just bypassed the mostly progressive media but sent it into a tizzy. In near-suicidal fashion, networks such as CNN have melted down in hatred of Trump, goaded on by Trump’s Twitter digs.

Trump has often bragged that having a large following on social media — he has more than 44 million Twitter followers and connects with millions more via Facebook and Instagram — is “like having your own newspaper.”

He has a point.

While the media goes ballistic over Trump’s inflammatory Twitter attacks on “fake news,” the vast majority of Trump’s electronic messaging simply reports on his daily activities and various agendas.

Trump has created a Twitter empire with a reach that far exceeds the combined subscriber base of The New York Times and Washington Post, and he has vastly expanded on Barack Obama’s use of a presidential Twitter feed to connect with voters.

Almost all of the people who have climbed into the Twitter ring with Trump — from Hillary Clinton to the take-a-knee millionaire National Football League players — have come out on the losing end.

Trump has proven far better than seasoned journalists and ego-driven celebrities at creating go-for-the-jugular putdowns of 240 characters or less.

Trump’s stream-of-conscious Twitter observations have sometimes proved eerily prescient. He tweeted warnings about the dangers of illegal immigration shortly before the tragic murder of Kate Steinle by an undocumented immigrant with a lengthy criminal record. Soon after Trump retweeted incendiary and controversial videos about radical Islamic violence, earning him condemnation from British Prime Minister Theresa May, it was announced that two men had been arrested in London for plotting a terrorist attack and assassination — of none other than May herself.

Why, then, should Trump ever consider pruning back his controversial tweets or confining them to the reportage of his daily achievements, in the manner of every other mostly boring politician?

Because personal dueling with journalists, celebrities and politicians is not only becoming superfluous but it is now distracting Trump’s audiences from a growing record of achievement.

Nine months ago, critics left and right were writing off Trump as an irrelevant buffoon without a clue of what to do in the White House. They predicted perennial sloth and inaction.

Not now. Trump’s Cabinet and judicial appointments, executive orders and deregulation measures are systematically overturning the progressive Obama project.

Abroad, the Trump national security team has recalibrated U.S. foreign policy from an apologetic recessional to engaged, principled realism.

Republican politicians once grumbled about the utopian Paris climate accord but never thought of doing much about it. Trump, like him or hate him, summarily withdrew America from the agreement — and shrugged off the ensuing green outrage.

Members of Congress occasionally expressed support for the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — but on the expectation that no barnstorming candidate would ever dare to officially recognize Jerusalem as such if elected president.

Prior to 2017, conventional economic wisdom dictated that the Dow Jones industrial average would not soon climb above 22,000, that the unemployment rate in peacetime could not fall to 4 percent, and that the GDP could not grow at an annual rate of 3 percent. All those shibboleths have either been blown up or may yet be blown up in 2018.

Trump is no longer written off by the Left as a sleepy dud. Instead, he suddenly is being redefined by many of his progressive enemies as a dangerous workaholic and right-wing revolutionary.

Never-Trump Republicans no longer insist that Trump is a liberal Manhattan wolf in conservative sheep’s clothing. Grudgingly, they now confess that he is ramming through a conservative agenda not seen since the days of their heartthrob, Ronald Reagan.

In other words, Trump’s record speaks louder than his tweets and now transcends his electronic spats.

So why should Trump still care what a minor journalist tweets about him to get much-needed attention? Why does the president need to keep pounding increasingly irrelevant former FBI Director James Comey, who has been reduced to tweeting anti-Trump slogans?

Trump’s record has now transcended his Twitter ankle-biters, who have become ever shriller in seeking attention in the form of a Trump electronic counter-putdown.

In sum, Trump has outgrown the Twitter wars. He should now just declare victory, retire as Twitter champ, hang up his tweeting gloves and leave the slap-down ring for others.

© 2017 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.