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| Phillip Lentsch Class of 2018 |
Donald Trump is a man of many talents. He manages a worldwide real estate company, created an incredibly profitable media brand off his family name, has always been able to maintain his hair color at the most neon bleach yellow imaginable, and most importantly, ascended to the presidency through a campaign season ripe with meme roasts and penis size jokes. On the eve of his inauguration, I watched as my friends and family questioned all the weaknesses and liabilities that awaited his administration. Ranging from the hateful messages towards women/minorities to his alleged ties to the Kremlin, I’d heard it all regarding Trump’s imminent demise. None of these concerns, however, troubled me as much as the news that Trump had opted to keep control of his personal Twitter account (a move I’m sure would have the Founding Fathers turning over in their graves).
What does it say about the legitimacy of the executive branch when you have the man at the top throwing a hissy fit in 140 characters? What does it say that we’ve granted the most powerful office in the free world to a man who can’t be trusted with his own Twitter account, let alone the nuclear codes? Trump is somewhat of an anomaly because he personally runs several of his social media platforms and doesn’t delegate the responsibility to his press team. This is in part what makes the man so unpredictable, even volatile. Days after his victory on November 8th, I distinctly remember watching Trump’s interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes”, an interesting diatribe where he had attributed a large part of his campaign success to social media. When asked if he planned on toning down his online rhetoric once he assumed the presidency, Trump smugly answered, “I’m going to be very restrained, if I use it at all, I’m going to be very restrained.”
What a farce that turned out to be.
From Donald Trump’s failed presidential run in 2012 onward, anyone with a smart phone had probably come across some of the outlandish and crude messages spewing from his Twitter page. If there was anyone lighting the Internet on fire and watching the chaos erupt from the sidelines (a designation commonly known amongst South Park fans as a “troll”), it was Trump. He was the center of controversy for tweets insulting Rosie O’Donnell, the Twilight saga, Bill Maher, Barack Obama, etc. etc. etc. His childlike pandering to Vladimir Putin through Twitter was also the subject of many Comedy Central and SNL roasts, such as when Trump praised Putin in 2015 for his support for him in the upcoming election: “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected with his own country and beyond.”
The past year and three months, however, have been the most perplexing when observing Trump and his digital footprint. Part of the media’s role with government is to serve as the watchdog on powerful public figures. It’s a tale as old as time: the press has always revered themselves as the “fourth estate” that can hold politician’s feet to the fire when needed, in order to curtail the effects of someone as vitriolic as our current president. Trump knew this, and turned the equation on its head. Through the use of an unadulterated Twitter flow, the man’s campaign genius lies in the fact that he was always the best candidate at circumventing the traditional news process that involved diffusing important information. He instead took to the screen to lambast journalists, business rivals, and politicians out of context on his way to the White House. The trouble lies in the fact that these tactics – however effective they may be – are only useful for campaigning, not governing. Trump’s Twitter is a diversion, and it has proved itself in times when he hasn’t really been held accountable for his words (think back to times such as Trump’s tweet about flag burners needing to go to jail to distract the public on charges being brought against his son-in-law Jared Kushner, or the media debacle with Megyn Kelly after the first Republican debate). It was easy then for Trump to consult his virtual bully pulpit; he was nothing but a candidate. Now, however, it’s the same childish arguments and blanket statements I’m seeing online, and the man is president.
Think of when Trump exhibited immaturity on New Year’s Eve by tweeting about how he always defeats his enemies (subtweet to Hillary Clinton). Think of when Trump claimed in January that millions of people had voted illegally, with no evidence to follow. Think of when he brought unsubstantiated allegations against Obama for “wiretapping” his phone during the election, a move that conveniently redirected the media’s attention from his second controversial travel ban that was released that same weekend. As was mentioned earlier, in typical circumstances, Trump’s words would be subject to media crucifixion through a public defense of his claims. Since Woodrow Wilson held the first presidential press conference in March 1913, all sixteen of his successors have used the sessions as basic parts of their policy strategies. Media exposure is a crucial component of the president’s answerability to the rest of the country; in a representative government such as ours, citizens expect to see their leaders respond to questions from others. Reporters act as surrogates for the public, fielding their own questions to the White House in order to maintain a healthy political dialogue. Trump’s lack of discourse with the media – and the public in general – has set a dangerous precedent for the future of executive accountability, especially when anything he says can be taken out of context on a platform as illegitimate as Twitter.
“Presidents want to get their message out, unfiltered by the press,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. “In that sense, what Donald Trump is doing with social media is not new. However, the extent to which he uses social media to attack the media directly could be relatively unprecedented. FDR was not giving fireside chats about why the New York Times was a failing institution.”
What Donald Trump needs to realize is that his Twitter account was advantageous to him when it was fair game to cyberbully and ridicule his peers without any true repercussions. Claiming that Obama committed an act of treason by wiretapping a presidential candidate’s phone isn’t only unacceptable, it’s libelous. The evasiveness of a man who hides behind the walls of his Mar-a-Lago resort when the going gets tough resembles that of an autocratic despot, not a United States president. I’m sick of my president reminding me of a Black Mirror episode gone wrong. It’s time for Trump to hand over his Twitter password to someone with a more stable temperament.
Phillip Lentsch, of Louisville, Ky., is a junior McConnell Scholar studying political science and communication.