Trump has reacted to his tweets not doing as well as they used to with the one behavior that is killing his account.
Trump is destroying his own Twitter account
Philip Bump of The Washington Post broke down Trump’s tweets by the numbers:
Trump is tweeting more than he used to. In the first half of 2017, he tweeted 937 times — counting only original tweets, and not retweets. In the first half of 2018, 1,276 times. This year? He’s tweeted 1,779 times. The peak was in May, when he tweeted 381 times, more than 12 times a day.
The number of retweets those tweets get, though, hasn’t gone up dramatically. In the first half of 2017, he got about 17.8 million retweets on his original tweets. (See the note on methodology below.) That’s an average of about 19,000 retweets per tweet. In the first half of 2018, 27.7 million retweets — but just a slightly higher average of 21,700 retweets per tweet. In the first half of this year, he got just over 40 million retweets, but the average per tweet was about 22,500.
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There’s a correlation between the frequency of Trump’s tweets and the average number of retweets he gets. On the graphs below, which compare monthly tweet counts to retweet averages, the more sharply a trendline drops down and to the right, the less effective Trump’s tweets are at getting retweets.
Trump has never understood supply and demand or scarcity very well. Trump has flooded Twitter with his tweets, which means that he is getting less impact per tweet because he is tweeting too often. Trump is undercutting his own account than claiming that Twitter is out to get him.
Why Is Twitter so Important To Trump
Trump admitted during his social media summit that he views Twitter as a “typewriter” that allows him to put out instant press releases and messages. Trump has long overstated the power of his Twitter account, and falsely believes that Twitter is why he won the election. The president views Twitter as a key to his reelection.
It is classic Trump that views Twitter as a messaging device but is so poor at controlling his impulses that he is killing his own Twitter account with oversaturation.
The cable news networks no longer treat Trump’s tweets like breaking news, which means that his “typewriter” doesn’t have the reach that it once did.
As Trump self-destructs, he is killing his Twitter account.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
