Trump’s Twitter addiction could reshape the presidency
The tool he uses to set the agenda now threatens to open a window into the mind of an American president.
It’s also — apparently — creating the desired media effect: A tweet by the president-elect in response to a news story prompts a spate of new headlines and offers television producers more than enough fodder to fill their morning, afternoon and, possibly, evening hours.
.. “The fact is Donald Trump was very successful with ‘The Apprentice.’ It was a remarkably popular show. He understands the value of tension, he understands the value of showmanship, and candidly, the news media is going to chase a rabbit. So it’s better off for him to give them a rabbit than for them to go off and find their own rabbit,” Newt Gingrich said Tuesday. “He’s had them fixated on Mitt Romney now for five or six days. And I think from his perspective, that’s terrific. Gives everybody something to talk about. He does not think of this as chaos; he thinks of this as creativity.”
.. And he is not about to stop stoking the country’s culture wars as he did so adroitly as a candidate even as he is promising to unify a public he has further divided.
.. In almost every situation thus far, the controversies created by Trump in 140-character bursts have served — intentionally or inadvertently — to distract the public from longer, more detailed and sometimes more damaging reports by the mainstream media.
.. “We saw the rise of this phrase in 2016, the ‘alt-right,’ but I think an even deeper phenomenon is the alt-reality Trump is trying to create,”
.. it’s not that he’s trying to describe the world in a factual way or even trying to be politically clever in aiding his agenda. He’s trying to demonstrate that he has the power to create his own reality and get sufficient numbers of Americans to live inside of it.”
.. People who study authoritarianism in Europe mention this as one of most disorienting things about living in those regimes — the realities put forward that aren’t based on people’s real, lived experiences, but leader’s ability to create this reality is the point.”
.. the constant tweeting from inside the Oval Office will offer the public a window into the president’s own real-time thoughts and feelings as it has never had before. The clarity with which the country will be able to see its next president, a flawed, deeply polarizing and larger-than-life media personality, stands in stark contrast to the opacity of his seemingly malleable policy positions and unformed legislative agenda.