![]() ![]() For years, Republicans pleaded with the former president to tone down the rhetoric and allow Democrats to be judged by their own actions, rather than allow an outrageous Trump tweet to overshadow anything else during the day. ![]() While Trump’s absence from Twitter has been a gift to Biden early on, it also may end up benefiting the GOP. “He was a kind of sinkhole in the media ecosystem,” Howard continued, “which often trapped professional journalists into covering inane stories or simply burned them out as individuals.” The conversation about race and social inequality can stay focused on policy ideas.” “Having him off Twitter allows the conversation about climate change to stay on topic - and about evidence. Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, which studies the social science of the internet. He was able to plant seeds of doubt about entire institutions and regular democratic processes,” said Philip N. “Trump had an amazing ability to distract from issues. But nothing has come even comparably close to getting trapped in the gravitational pull of Trump’s Twitter feed, which had the ability to move markets, unseat office holders and tear up news cycles again and again in a matter of hours. “It has become abundantly clear since his absence on Twitter how much Trump was driving a media narrative,” said Paul Bentz, an Arizona-based Republican strategist and pollster.īiden still has faced a steady flow of criticism during his short time in office. Trump wasn’t calling Biden a “loser” for his Covid-19 vaccination plans, or attacking Anthony Fauci as a failure he should have fired when the nation’s leading infectious disease expert spoke out about how difficult it was for scientists to operate in the Trump administration.Ī generation after Ronald Reagan’s regulators killed the Fairness Doctrine, the Trump-era Republican Party is fired up over what it sees as anti-conservative bias in companies like Twitter. His Twitter megaphone wasn’t hyping the construction job losses that could come when Biden ended the Keystone XL pipeline project. Trump wasn’t there to demand a popular uprising against Biden’s federal mask-wearing mandate. Indeed, Twitter’s suspension of Trump’s account has seemed to realign the political universe, minimizing diversions and interruptions as the broader conversation over Biden’s agenda played out. “Not having to deal with a deranged new tweet every hour? They feel blessed,” an outside adviser said. “Whether or not Trump slinks back into public view or opens up a Parler account isn’t going to make a difference in how we communicate with the American people.”īut even if the strategy would have remained the same, Biden’s team also concedes that the absence of Trump and his Twitter feed has been a pleasant addition to the job it’s doing. “The President spent two years ignoring Trump’s distractions and staying focused on the message he wanted to deliver, and it paid off with a commanding win,” a White House official said in a statement to POLITICO on Wednesday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |