It’s astonishing how quickly Trump deflated when he was banned from social media. It’s horrifying to realize how powerful they made him.
I never thought social media would ban Trump* although they needed to ban him years ago. We all saw that his tweets were instantly the news of the day - often the ONLY news of the day. They became breaking news, one at a time, day after day, week after week, year after year.
Politicians feared his tweets, journalists dutifully and breathlessly reported nearly all of them as breaking news, and they grew increasingly more horrifying in their lying extremism. Worse; nobody called him out about them or stopped reporting them. Social media companies reveled in their golden (orange?) goose who brought them more money than they ever dreamed of. His tens of millions of followers were coveted. Oh, the traffic he brought to those sites.
Donald Trump became the first person who became powerful while sitting on the toilet. His policy announcements, insults, and firings started with his first potty trip in the wee hours of the morning and didn’t end until his last burp from his last cheeseburger at night. Tweet after tweet he grew more powerful because he was more feared.
There were no speeches, press conferences, announcements, press releases, or other normal government behavior. Government was done by tweet and kept being done by tweet.
It was only when he instigated a riot that killed (now) 7 people that he got banned. Like sticking a pin in a balloon, Donald J. Trump shriveled into a tiny, hate-filled, self-pitying empty sack within moments of losing his account.
No organization or platform should ever be that powerful that they can be abused and manipulated by such evil as Trump.
He should have been banned years ago by social media companies that only see eyeballs as $$$$ with zero accountability for the damages done. Now is the time that they need to be seriously regulated before the next Donald Trump emerges from the depths of their sleazy platforms. Serious reforms are needed since these private corporations have now assumed far too much power even over even governments.
Moss can’t be allowed to grow on the urgency of this or time wasted so people forget the seriousness of what happened, why, and how.
Media organizations should share their shame at their participation in creating Trump. From the hours they devoted to covering every second of the man, the time they spent waiting for him to descend the golden escalator to his Presidential announcement, every hour they wasted broadcasting an empty podium waiting for him, the air time they stupidly devoted to his tweets and broadcasting his lies, they deserve enormous plates of humiliation at their abject failure to the profession of journalism.
From now on I look forward to only hearing about Trump indictments and prison sentences, to how bankrupt he has become, how he has no friends or allies, and to how reviled he is around the world.
*Today I’m returning using his name rather than the tRump that has been my reference for him for the last 5 years. His name will live in infamy so he can have it back.