Dem
51
GOP
49
As mentioned above, Trump posted to Twitter for the first time in 2 years late last week. Was that the first of many postings? Politico's senior media writer, Jack Shafer, has some thoughts on the matter. Trump has basically admitted that Truth Social is a failure in terms of readership, finances, and corporate structure. So will he come home to what everyone except Elon Musk calls Twitter? Heraclitus said: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." Heraclitus was obviously a visionary thinking ahead of his time about social media.
Trump became a Twitter star because it was a novelty for a presidential candidate to act like a drunk at closing time, shooting off incoherent attacks on anyone and everyone who happened to pop into his head at the moment. Everyone wanted to see what he said, and if it contradicted what he said yesterday. His tweets all became their own news stories. The novelty has long since worn off.
Trump will make it even worse for himself by making a new appearance just a rerun of the old one. Deep state. Rigged election. I won. I Love Lucy was great the first time around, but less so by the eighth or ninth rerun. No one really expects anything newsworthy from Trump's tweets or truths anymore, so why bother looking at them?
Also important is that Elon Musk has so degraded Twitter that it has lost its cultural primacy and significance. Meanwhile, TikTok took over that role while Trump was on vacation. Twitter has become a right-wing cesspool of hate that is going to repel almost everyone but the most ardent Trump supporters—precisely the ones he doesn't have to reach (except for grifting) because they are already in the bag. As a result of Twitter's degradation, reporters don't check it every 5 minutes, like they used to. Does a tweet make a noise if it is typed in a forest and there is no one around to read it?
Another issue here is his contract with Truth Social. He isn't allowed to post anything to other social media sites first and has to wait 6 hours after a Truth Social posting to send it somewhere else. In the modern fast-paced world, that will make the tweet yesterday's news. Reporters don't want that.
So Shafer concludes that even if Trump comes back home, it's not going to be like last time at all. (V)