All Text and No Subtext

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/opinion/trump-twitter-wall-shutdown.html

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We are now a government of the Twitter, by the Twitter and for the Twitter.

At least that is how it felt at the end of a week in which President Trump used the social communications medium and was used by it in ways that the founders never would have envisioned.

While Twitter as a direct line to, well, everyone, has been a hallmark of the Trump presidency, his persistent and increasing use of it over the last several days has reached new and truly bizarre levels.

[Kara Swisher will answer your questions about this column on Twitter on Wednesday at 12 p.m. Eastern: @KaraSwisher.]

The bully pulpit has become the bully tweet — with an emphasis on bully.

Mr. Trump wrote two dozen twitchy posts in just 24 hours from Thursday to Friday, employing more capitalization and exclamation marks than a Macy’s after-holidays sales ad. He tweeted threats to shut down the government over the funding of the border wall; he tweeted farewell to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned in protest over the pullout of troops in Syria and Afghanistan; he tweeted criticism of the Fed on interest rates; and in honor of the Farm Bill, he tweeted a truly bizarre video of him singing the “Green Acres” theme song at an Emmy Awards show with the Throwback Thursday hashtag.

One congressman confessed that his colleagues were waiting for a tweet from Mr. Trump to tell them how to vote on the continuing resolution to fund the government. Representative Ryan Costello told a reporter, “If Trump tweets something then we’ll do it.” Until then, he said, “we’re all just twisting in the wind.”

Twitter also slapped back at Mr. Trump, with tweets by pundits like Ann Coulter, who has used the medium deftly to influence him. Also doubling down on the caps-lock button and a perfectly modulated faux rage tone — “Gutless president in wall-less country” — she managed to get Mr. Trump to unfollow her before he did a 180-degree turn and did as she bid.

On the other side, the Olympic tweeter George Conway, also known as @gtconway3d (and Mr. Kellyanne) has become the second most epic troll in Twitter’s short history — after Mr. Trump, of course — by tweeting and retweeting so rapidly that it’s like watching a hostage trying to send desperate Morse code messages with his blinks before the video camera turns off. About Mr. Mattis’s devastating resignation letter, Mr. Conway dryly tweeted: “The nicest line: ‘Dear Mr. President.’”

The uses and abuses of Twitter will doubtless be studied by historians in decades to come. It shows us the entire ruling class strafing one another in the digital ether, but with disturbing real-life implications. “The Democrats now own the shutdown!” Mr. Trump declared to his 56.3 million followers, as if he were commenting on a baseball game, even though it meant tens of thousands of government employees could soon be without a paycheck.

There is one positive way of looking at this whole situation: The smoky back rooms are all gone now, making way for a 24-hour feed that chronicles every bit of the action under klieg lights. There are no secrets, no side deals in the shadows, no quiet signaling. Instead, it is all text and no subtext, moving from action, reaction, reaction to the reaction and so on.

We used to say no one should see the sausage being made. But the digital age of Twitter and Trump turns that on its head. You see not only the making of the sausage, but also the goring of the pig and the butchering, too, followed by the eating of the sausage and then what happens after that. Nothing is left unsaid, even if nothing that’s being said means much at all.

It also makes one wonder exactly what Mr. Trump would do without Twitter, which has become his best and only true way to communicate. He can certainly go on television and he does; he can make a live speech and he does; he can stand out on the White House lawn and he does. But it’s not the same. The lightning-fast, easy-hit addiction of Twitter has Mr. Trump hooked like none other.

And there are zero alternatives online. Facebook is too bloated and slow; Snapchat is too small and hard to use for the olds; Reddit is a hot mess. There is no other digital harbor for Mr. Trump’s carnival barker show, no place where both the left and right can react and where all the media gathers.

So what would happen to the president who governs by tweet if he finally did or said something that forced Twitter to throw him off the platform? Could he do his job at all?

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