Opinion by Hal Brown
President Joe Biden now has a dot gov for his website BuildBackBeter.gov He still has his Twitter page (with 19 million followers) and Facebook account (7.7 million followers). Trump has almost 90 million followers on Twitter. Obviously not all of them voted for him.
Trump’s Twitter reply threads create the illusion of dialogue but they are just that, an illusion. He never responds to tweet replies. Many, if not most of them, mock him unmercifully. For example, here’s a reply to his tweet which had about 25,000 other replies, from an hour ago:
Here’s a reply from Kathy Griffin from last night:
Trump has been a boon to Twitter and to websites like HuffPost and RawStory (today for example) which have staff searching to find snarky tweet replies to republish.
Trump has cheapened the presidency in ways too numerous to elaborate on, but the way he has used his tweets has been a defining characteristic of his presidency. His firing loyal employees by a tweet was like a boss firing an employee by flying a pink slip made into a paper airplane into his office.
I see no compelling reason why President Biden, Vice President Harris, or any other official in the Executive Branch must use social media to communicate when they can have their own dot gov website with a section for news, but I expect they will continue to do so. I anticipate they will have someone designated to be in charge of social and digital media handling this.It is a position the infamous Brad Parscale held before he was fired and then had a serious mental breakdown.
I don’t think it would be particularly detrimental to having a transparent presidency to actively maintain either the Twitter or Facebook accounts, but they should be run by someone in the Office of Communications. I also think that if they disappeared they wouldn't be particularly missed.
Even if President Biden keeps Twitter we certainly won’t have a president who is awake and rage tweeting in the wee hours of the morning.
White House press conferences, with or without the president participating, became an exercise in the theater of the absurd under Trump.
One thing is certain, we won't have the likes of Trump's four press secretaries, Sean Spicer, Sarah Sanders, Stephanie Grisham (who was criticized for describing the botched execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood III as "peaceful" after other witnesses said he was gasping for air), and Kayleigh McEnany (in my tweet below which had over 1,100 impressions).
We don’t know yet who the Biden press secretary will be. Three women who worked on the campaign are in the running, Karine Jean-Pierre, Symone Sanders, and Kate Bedingfield. I think he will chose one of them. My money is on Karine Jean-Pierre based on her appearances on MSNBC. I’ve seen Symone Sanders too and she is very good. I’ve never seen Kate Bedingfield.
A press conference gives the public, through reporters, a chance to ask salient questions and have them answered. It will be a breath of fresh air to actually have the press secretary give honest answers and take follow up questions if the reporters don’t think their questions were fully addressed.
I think we will see two or more press conferences a week in the Biden administration with the president participating only when there is vital information to announce.
I predict that Oval Oval Office addresses will be reserved only for matters of significant national or international importance where it isn’t deemed necessary to take reporter’s questions.
The various ceremonial appearances of the president with foreign dignitaries and to present awards like the Medal of Freedom are a necessary part of the job. It will be a relief to have them handled without the self-aggrandizing remarks coming from the president.
I have no problem with members of Congress using social media directly. It is an effective way for them to communicate to their followers. However, I think that the President and Vice President should elevate their offices and use the traditional methods to communicate with the public which I think befits the dignity of their offices.