President Donald Trump addressed criticisms Saturday that his use of Twitter to attack his critics is not presidential. “My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL,” he tweeted, and added: “Make America Great Again!”
In another tweet, he pointed out that his use of social media had been crucial to his success in the 2016 presidential election — despite urging by the media, and even by his fellow Republicans, that he stop it.
One thing is clear: Trump has always used this method of fighting his critics. In 2012, he tweeted: “Everybody tells me not to hit back at the lowlifes that go after me for PR–sorry, but I must. It’s my nature.”
And long before Twitter existed, he was doing the same thing through more conventional methods. In one of the most memorable passages of his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, Trump describes writing a nasty letter to Paul Goldberger, who was then an architecture critic for the New York Times. Goldberger had written a positive review of one of Trump’s projects — a “setup,” Trump says, for a negative review of another. He concludes by observing: “My people keep telling me I shouldn’t write letters like this to critics. The way I see it, critics get to say what they want about my work, so why shouldn’t I be able to say what I want to about theirs?”
Nothing has changed in thirty years, except for the medium... One difference is immediately apparent: Trump generally confines his attacks to members of the media and political elite, while Obama attacked ordinary people, or Americans as a whole.
.. Moreover, he is usually punching back: his targets almost always start the fight.
.. One would like a president to do so at all times. Yet recent history is littered with Republicans who played nice and lost elections, or backed down from a fight once in office. Controversial tweets may be a political hazard of a winning mentality.
Regardless, many Americans prefer a president who breaks the social norms of politics to one who breaks the rules of the Constitution, however politely.