The Loyalists
The replies appearing closest to the US president’s tweets occupy some of the most influential real estate on the internet. Here are the seven types are people who tweet at Trump.
Scott Presler has been t weeting at Trump for months. He targets Attorney General Jeff Sessions, too, as well as White House adviser Kellyanne Conway. Sometimes, figures from the Trump administration even tweet back at the conservative political operative.
Presler, the 28- year- old field operations co- ordinator at ACT for America, a political group focused on national security, had 10,000 followers on Twitter a year ago; now @ ScottPresler has more than 76,000. “I’m pretty good at marketing myself on Twitter,” Presler says. “It’s using trending hashtags, replying to Trump and top people.”
His time on Twitter is, in part, an extension of his work as a political organiser. “I truly believe in President Trump’s vision and message. What I’m trying to do now is positive and uplifting.”
Meanwhile, the person behind @ TrumpsGucciGirl, who asked not to be identified by her real name, can claim the ultimate achievement for a Trump loyalist on Twitter: an interaction with @ realDonaldTrump himself. In August 2016, GucciGirl posted about then- Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, with whom Trump was engaged in a public feud. The future president copied and pasted her tweet into his Twitter feed for his followers to see.
GucciGirl is on Twitter exclusively for @ realDonaldTrump. She doesn’t follow anyone else and doesn’t plan to. The vast majority of her nearly 31,000 tweets are related to Trump. “I only follow him, because that’s my only interest,” she said. “I’m not on there to make friends. We all have our own lives.”
Unlike other loyalists, @ TylerDoor doesn’t particularly love Trump. He didn’t vote for him and, in an interview in which he declined to use his real name, expressed some criticism of the president’s demeanor. But few things Trump has done in office bother @ TylerDoor nearly as much as the withering insults Trump receives from critics on Twitter.
“The people would say, ‘ Little hands, you’re a Nazi, you’re a fascist, you have orange hair’. Things that — almost — a teenager would do.”
Instead of t weeting directly at Trump, which @ TylerDoor believes wouldn’t be seen by the president, he engages with t weeting detractors. “Sometimes they respond, and then you get a dialogue going.”