I don’t think I’ve ever been one of those “extremely online” people who lives and breathes Twitter controversies and whatever “political war” is being fought via tweets. There are so many political stories which originated from Twitter wars and they take me completely off-guard. But even someone moderately online like me is well aware of the strange political realignment which has happened on social media following the January 6th insurrection, Twitter’s mass banning of Nazis, and their suspension of Donald Trump’s account. It’s really remarkable how different everything feels just in the past three weeks. People in the Biden administration are feeling it too – after January 6th, they have not had to contend with Donald Trump’s constant whining, lies, conspiracies and threats of violence. And they feel #blessed.
As he entered his first week in office, President Joe Biden was handed a priceless gift: the blissful sound of former President Donald Trump’s Twitter silence. Gone are the pre-dawn tirades, the all-caps declarations, the “Sleepy Joe” mocking, the Fox News-driven agitations and the general incitements. Instead, Biden debuted a flurry of executive orders without ever having to deal with what surely would have been rapid-fire antagonism from the man whose legacy he was dismantling.
Inside the White House, officials insist that their communications strategy hasn’t changed simply because Trump is both gone and silent.
“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. “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.”
But 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.
“Not having to deal with a deranged new tweet every hour? They feel blessed,” an outside adviser said.
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. Trump wasn’t there to demand a popular uprising against Biden’s federal mask-wearing mandate. His Twitter megaphone wasn’t hyping the construction job losses that could come when Biden ended the Keystone XL pipeline project. 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.
“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. Biden still has faced a steady flow of criticism during his short time in office. 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.
Politico quoted one “Republican strategist” who was basically like “well, now Biden has all the attention, which could be a bad thing.” Like, do Republicans really think that Democrats are going to lament the idea of putting attention onto actual issues and their own leadership? It also underlines the fact that most of Trump’s tweets didn’t actually have a political goal or any kind of larger, coherent political strategy: Trump’s tweets were just about his incessant need for attention, his bottomless desire to be centered in every story. Plus, he was a thin-skinned, baby-fisted bully who loved the idea of sitting in his diaper, rage-screeching at people. Trump must be bouncing off the walls of Mar-a-Lago without his Twitter account. And yes, it’s okay to admit that Democrats are really happy that they don’t have to contend with his Twitter bullsh-t.
Also: President Biden understands how to make viral content too.
PETER DOOCY: Mr President, what did you talk to Vladimir Putin about?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: You. He sends his best. pic.twitter.com/Fq0zglc9aK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 26, 2021
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
I have to admit I have some PTSD from Trump’s reign of terror. When I see the word president I have to remember that it’s okay now, Biden is my president, unlike Trump. I used to cringe whenever I heard people call him President Trump. He was so undeserving of that title.
I never called him that either.
I just said this to my mom yesterday. She was over watching the news and I realized every time they said “The President” i flinched for about 1 second and then realized, no they mean President Biden. It’s a relief EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I KNOW!! Every time I would see the presidental seal, or the White House, or the flag, I would cringe!!! It’s good to feel pride again but it will take some getting used to. It’s such a relief!!!!
I think we’re all suffering from PTSD – Post Trump Stress Disorder.
I refused to attach President to his name. I quite frequently refused to use his name at all and preferred to use the numerous mocking nicknames the public came up with.
I never viewed his time in office as legitimate. It was just one huge grift for him, his friends and family.
He’ll always be Cheeto to me.
I never called the other one “president” either, especially on this site. I just used his name or Baby Fists or Bigly. My quiet rebellion.
I just wanted to add that I agree with you about the PTSD. Honestly, I think most people are experiencing it on some level. I WANT to be able to relax, secure in the knowledge that he’s been banished. But the second I start relaxing, I tense up again thinking “that mutha fucka has been too quiet”. And I worry that he and his minions are up to some secret shit.
It’s like when people that Voldemort was vanquished the first time, but in reality, he was only severely weakened but was able to build back up again because he had split his soul into horcruxes. So he was never really dead. And, right now, I view his children as Cheeto’s horcruxes. I know one of Ivana’s nicknames is Nagini, but Nagini was a horcrux in the book! And if Cheeto dies, his evil spawn will live on.
That’s why they ALL need to be prosecuted to the fullest for ALL of their crimes.
I heard someone in the media refer to him as ‘ex-president’, and I thought, that’s perfect. In the media it’s President Obama, President Bush, President Clinton. So I bet it really pisses him off to be the only one called ex-president aka loser.
Same here, never called him president. Didn’t even write his name for many years. And I too am having a little PTSD every time POTUS is mentioned until my brain remembers it’s Biden now.
As someone who wasn’t real keen on Biden early on, I am fully on board now. He is who we needed to win back the White House, his cabinet and advisors are all highly respected and diverse people, and he got to work immediately fixing so much. Plus dogs!
I remember listening to NPR a and the first time I heard them say president trump, I felt physically ill. Now I feel like crying from happiness when a reporter says president Biden.
Omg I was literally laying in bed last night thinking about how amazing it has felt not reading about trumps insane tweets and the frenzy that they stirred up every single day for years. It almost brought me to tears thinking about how calm it feels. I don’t even have a Twitter acct and the daily tweeting from him gave me extreme anxiety.
That video of Biden has the same energy as the one of Obama making faces when a reporter asked about I think, war with Russia? I’m so glad to have someone with a sense of humor back in the office.
Agreed. For someone that they’re trying to bill as slow and senile, he sure has a quick wit and a fast comeback. It was really fun to see.
It’s also a callback to when Doocy asked him in the summer who his VP pick was going to be and Biden, riding his bike, also said “you”.
This guy is witty with a sense of humour. What a refreshing change.
@Nic919
That makes it even better, a witty callback! All the people saying he’s senile should probably be reminded of that connection.
And the ‘slow’ thing is caused by his stutter. Even though the Republicans try to pretend they are referring to his age, they know exactly why he sometimes stumbles or pauses while speaking. Shame on them.
I know right? It’s so refreshing to see genuine humor and wit back in the white house. And as a 35 year old woman, who is happily married, is it too much to admit that I am totally in love with Joe Biden?!:)
That was a fantastic comeback to Doocy and all the Putin loving Fox viewers, ZING! Great job.
Heh, I feel the exact same way. I used to wake up every morning and spend an hour in dread of what happened while I was asleep, and would get caught up in the echo chamber of anger and frustration. now that that’s gone, I’m feeling the withdrawal – which I know is a good thing. It’s definitely a PTSD situation.
Me too, and I’m Canadian. Mr. Jaded would get on the computer every morning to read the news and I’d wander into the den and say…”What fresh hell is it today dear?” (Paraphrasing Dorothy Parker).
My husband and I had that same routine, too!
I was conditioned from a lifetime of relatively “normal” presidents, (if you count paranoid Nixon and the “Darth Cheney” administration as normal compared to Trump), to respect at least the office, even if I had misgivings about the person occupying it.
So at the start, after the tears and shock and disbelief subsided that a bigoted misogynistic open abuser of women and disabled people could be elected to our highest political office, our family buckled down and prayed for Trump to do well, as we do for all administrations. We did not want our country to fall into the chaos and division we feared it could with this reality tv show clown in its highest office.
We grit our teeth and said “Well it’s just four years, there will be experienced people around him, and hopefully women will be able to keep their kitties out of grabbing distance. How bad could it be?”
Oh good grief, we were so naive and innocent to have even a shred of hope his administration would be less than absolutely catastrophic for our nation, for our environment, for our allies, for our very lives.
Even if there had not been a pandemic, the level to which he undermined every single administrative body and every project so that his family could grift has been destructive to levels we won’t fully realize for a long while yet, until after the articles and books are written. He and his spawn were administrative terrorists even before they became actual terrorist leaders making a call for insurrection.
He will never be President Trump to me. He shall always be Cheetolini and his daughter is Nagini, Jared will be Brahms the evil doll, and his sons…well who cares about them. Even their dad forgets they exist when he’s not looking right at them. Barron gets a pass for being a kid. Tiffany who?
Guestwithcat, that is a perfect description of the last 4 years. Bravo.
Trump still has a platform, he just isn’t using it. He can get book deals and all the TV time he wants. He can do podcasts and radio. I find it is rather odd and quite pathetic that all these career politicians and so-called “business men” who have been playing the game well before the internet are so deeply wounded by the loss of Twitter.
I agree Ann – and I wonder if he has been advised to stay quiet until the senate impeachment trial is over. He can do it when it is in his best interest, and it shows that he is so intentional in his disruptive behaviour (which we already knew)
I watched Press Speaker Psaki’s 1st briefing and she walked up to the podium with a tan binder and I actually flinched.
Now that she has done them for a week now, I don’t. This is going to take time.
This is a transition for all of us and it just showed this country was always on borrowed time with it came to norms and courtesies.
We came SO CLOSE to going over the edge. Almost every day I think about what would have happened if Biden lost, and it’s terrifying.
It must be KILLING Trump that he has NO platform to use to get attention now – the main stream media have all but ignored him since noon 20th Jan and I haven’t seen or heard him on his beloved FoxNews (seems they are not returning his calls – LOL). Thou am sure he won’t stay quiet for long – I think once the impeachment trial is over he’ll be megaphoning his intentions via some other outlet.
Enjoy the silence Joe!
Thank you to every site not giving oxygen to the previous administration and hangers on.
The entire world was forced to live through orange man’s narcissism when he had the attention of the media as president. Even not following him on Twitter and living in a different country, it was still impossible to avoid his constant bs. Twitter should have removed him years ago.
This. I will always blame those at Twitter for allowing him such a massive global platform to rage and rage, spewing all his poison and not simply cutting him off. I don’t care what his job was, I don’t care how rich, he didn’t have the right to harass and attack everyone with his garbage. His constant stream of jokes mixed with insults helped to normalize the abuse, that’s why some idiots are still under his spell and others are now experiencing PTSD. Four years of bullying from an absolute psycho. Cheeto literally ruined lives, and Twitter, in part, enabled that.
Not once did I refer to him as President Trump while he was in office.
I haven’t been able to entirely relax because Drumpf has too many sycophants and enablers still on Capitol Hill and too many supporters among the electorate. It’s going to take years to whittle away at them.
It used to irritate me immensely when the Democrats would do something – doesn’t matter what – and the news leads would be ‘President Trump blasts thing that Democrats have done’. Not the thing. His reaction to it. It has been lovely the last few days not to see his ignorant and insulting tweets being part of every headline. What does trump think about Biden’s cabinet picks, his overturning of trump’s horrible policies, his firing of trump toadies shoved into positions literally hours before the inauguration? Don’t know. Don’t care. 🙂