I find This
New York Times' take on Donald Trump's "mastery" of Twitter a bit odd, especially where it seems to suppose Donald Trump's use of Twitter is an intentional strategy, as opposed to the compulsive ravings of a megalomaniac with many hours of spare time
on his hands.
A year later, Mr. Trump has mastered Twitter in a way no candidate for president ever has, unleashing and redefining its power as a tool of political promotion, distraction, score-settling and attack — and turning a 140-character task that other candidates farm out to young staff members into a centerpiece of his campaign.
That's the most charitable possible way to put it. What Donald Trump does on Twitter is known by the rest of us in the internet-worlds as
trolling, constant and near-comically shallow insults of his current enemy of the moment coupled with steady retweets of those that compliment him. So he has "mastered" Twitter in the same way a spiteful but bored middle schooler might "master" Twitter.
Or, what the hell, perhaps it's not an embarrassing lack of maturity but a mark of political genius?
[Trump] has managed to fulfill a vision, long predicted but slow to materialize, sketched out a decade ago by a handful of digital campaign strategists: a White House candidacy that forgoes costly, conventional methods of political communication and relies instead on the free, urgent and visceral platforms of social media.
“He’s used social media to replace the traditional apparatus of a political campaign,” said Zac Moffatt, who oversaw Mitt Romney’s digital outreach in 2012 and co-founded Targeted Victory, a consulting firm focused on online campaign tactics. “Trump is living on this medium.”
The author also notes the extraordinary cult of personality that has enveloped Trump and his online presence—again, in only the most diplomatic terms. How exactly did a preternaturally obnoxious New York billionaire who eats pizza with a knife and a fork get surrounded by "true conservatives" who suddenly think
that resume is the one that best represents their down-home American values? (Hint: shared racism.) Nobody can quite say, it seems (shared racism), but no matter what Donald Trump says or does he can count on an army of likeminded followers to defend him with as much of the emotion, loudness, and amateur propaganda images that 140 characters can hold.
“We’ve never seen this before in politics,” Mr. Berland said. “This is not just a rally that happens once in a while. This is a continuous Trump rally that happens on Twitter at all hours. He fills the Twitter stadium every day.”
Oh, I think we've seen this before. A loudmouthed, eternally angry would-be leader whose rise to fame was stoked primarily by openly xenophobic rhetoric and who is soon surrounded by can-see-no-wrong followers who believe that even though he seems to have no particular ideas or knowledge or political competency, he will be able to bend all the problems of the nation into quick submission through sheer force of his belligerent, oversized will? Pfft. That's not new in politics, that's not even
uncommon.