@RealDonaldTrump, the Twitter feed that grew from the random feelings of a reality TV star into the American president’s chudel, has died. He was not very 12 years old.
The inspirational hand was born to a tycoon in New York who used it to help him become the 45th president of the USA. It began with a tweet May 4, 2009, encouraging the appearance of Donald Trump to appear on the David Letterman show.
He died in more than 57,000 tweets, with Trump using some of his last posts on the powerful platform to join a pro-Trump mob that attacked Congress halls in a deadly attack and lawyers set up to prove the case.
The account occurred when Twitter announced Friday that it was permanently pulling the plug on @realDonaldTrump, expressing concern that Trump would use it to “incite more violence. Trump said he would be “building our own platform soon.” We will not be SILENCED! ”
See also: Twitter permanently suspends Trump’s account
Trump, a modernist politician but a seasoned salesman, understood the power of social media in ways that many other politicians did not. And he threw it with unprecedented power to subdue his opponents, shape elections and shape reality – at least in the eyes of his supporters.
Early on, @realDonaldTrump seemed innocent enough. Its owner, who had abundant experience in marketing casinos, real estate and even Oreos, used the platform largely to promote his books, media looks and friendly plugins to friends.
But as Trump began to get bad at running with the White House, he became a tool to overthrow opponents and shape his nationalist philosophy, “America First.”
He used his poison equally, whether he was insulting famous enemies (Rosie O’Donnell was “raw, rude, obnoxious and dumb”) or using xenophobia to curse a country (Britain is ” trying hard to eradicate their great Muslim problem ”).
Peter Costanzo, then director of online marketing for the publishing company that released Trump’s book, “Think Like a Champion,” helped bring Trump to the stage.
Twitter was still in its infancy at the time. But Costanzo, who later came to work for The Associated Press, saw the then-140-character-per-message platform as a new tool that the real estate mogul could use to drive sales and customers. reach a wider audience.
Costanzo was given seven minutes to pitch to Trump – “Not five minutes, not 10,” he recalled in a 2016 interview.
Trump liked what he heard.
“I said, ‘We’ll call you @realDonaldTrump – you’re the real Donald Trump,'” Costanzo recalled. “He thought about it for a minute and said: ‘I like it. Let’s do it. ‘”
Other than the Trump family, no one seemed to be off limits from his Twitter anger. Trump attacked Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, 2016 political rivals, mainstream administrative workers, former administration workers, the Republican Party and cable networks.
@RealDonaldTrump was fertile: On days when its owner was particularly tempted, such as in the midst of impeachment proceedings, he squeezed out more than 100 prints.
In his most popular tweet, on October 2, 2020, @realDonaldTrump announced that Trump and first lady Melania Trump had contracted the coronavirus. The post received 1.8 million views and nearly 400,000 retweets, according to Factba.se., Which monitors the president’s social media practices and reporting.
The bill was used to name a firing. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson learned about his ouster in a tweet.
The account threatened enemies in the most colorful conditions. Before Trump fell “in love” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un through secretly exchanged letters, Trump used Twitter to call him a “rocket man” and promised a response with “fire and anger” if the author was invading the United States.
@RealDonaldTrump would often spread false, misleading and malicious allegations, such as the unfounded allegations that protesters at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s trial hearings were paid by liberal philanthropist George Soros and that the November election was put forward by voter fraud.
Trump would often tweet well past midnight and before morning, out cathartic for protests (Witch hunting! Crooked Hillary, Russia, Russia, Russia, FAKE NEWS, and so on adhart.)
For the most part, @realDonaldTrump and his 280-character posts effectively allowed Trump to work around the Washington media center and increase the alliance message.
At times @realDonaldTrump fell. Trump deleted 1,166 tweets and, in his last months on the platform, 471 tweets were marked by Twitter for misinformation, according to Factba.se.
In one of his most memorable Twitter stumbles, Trump in May 2017 sent a cryptic tweet after midnight (and it was later deleted) that read “Despite the persistent bad news of covfefe. ”
The gibberish set the Twitterverse long at a standstill. The theories included that the tweeter-in-chief had fallen asleep in the middle of a message and that the man who once banged his “best words” was adding a new word to the dictionary to properly describe the prejudice between Democrats and the media. The mystery was never solved.
Sam Nunberg, a longtime advisor – and now a Trump adviser – said in the summer of 2011, after Trump announced that he was not running in 2012 but wanted to stay relevant, his team decided start using social media to raise its profile.
They chose to focus on Twitter, where he already had an account and hundreds of thousands of followers. Nunberg remembers Trump’s daily reports on the growth that followed. Trump would sometimes take it back with handwritten notes – “Why not more?” “Why so slow?”
They were celebrating when they hit the million mark.
“Twitter certainly played an important role in raising Donald Trump as a politician within Republican politics and he really enjoyed it,” Nunberg said. “Remember he used to say: ‘I wanted to have a newspaper. This is great, it’s like a newspaper without the losses. ‘”
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., took to Twitter shortly after the platform blocked @realDonaldTrump noting that he continues to let Iran’s chief executive “and several other dictatorial regimes ”used the platform, but cannot keep up with his father. “Mao would be proud,” Trump Jr. said.
Eventually, @realDonaldTrump offered a closer look into Trump’s state of mind over a decade, a time when the TV star “Apprentice” transformed into the 45th American president.
Down the road, as historians look for insights into Trump’s thoughts on the issues of his time – anything from how actress Kristen Stewart handled co-star Robert Pattinson to the views of presidents on Russia ‘s meddling in the 2016 election – the first stop is inevitably one of the many digital archives that hold @realDonaldTrump’ s tweets.
With Trump, whatever the subject, there is always a tweet for that.
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