Trump’s influence waning without social media
Banning by Twitter and other platforms is testing his power to shape national debate.
WASHINGTON — Former President Trump insists he’s enjoying his life off Twitter. The news releases his aides fire off on an increasingly frequent basis are more “elegant,” he says. Plus there’s no risk of backlash for retweeting unsavory accounts.
But since Trump was barred from major social media channels after helping incite the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, his power to shape the national conversation is being tested.
Trump transformed from a reality television star to a politician and president by bending the tools of communication and the media to his will. He still connects with supporters through his releases and appearances on Fox News and other conservative outlets, where he repeats misinformation about the 2020 election.
And he remains a powerful force in the GOP, playing starring roles at events like the Republican National Committee’s donor retreat Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Still, the sway over American life he once enjoyed appears to be eroding, at least for now.
“It’ll never be the same for Trump unless he’s a candidate again,” said historian Harold Holzer, director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute and author of a book about presidents and the news media. “I don’t think it’s unnatural for coverage to diminish. I’m sure it’s tough on his ego, given how much oxygen he sucks up and how much ink he generates, but it’s not unnatural for an expresident to get less attention.”
Still, it’s been a dramatic adjustment. Trump’s tweets used to drive the news cycle, with CNN, MSNBC and Fox
News often spending dozens of hours a week combined displaying his missives, according to an analysis of television news archives by the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone, known as the GDELT Project.
Since he was barred from Twitter and other platforms, Trump can no longer speak directly to large swaths of his audience and must rely on
supporters and the media to amplify his messages.
To compensate for the blackout, Trump aides have been pumping out statements and endorsements that often sound just like the tweets he used to dictate. “Happy Easter to ALL, including the Radical Left CRAZIES who rigged our Presidential Election, and want to destroy our Country!” read one sent from his political action committee. (“Happy Easter!” was the more subdued version offered by his official government office.)
At the same time, Trump has been ramping up his appearances on conservative media — even sitting down with his daughter-in-law for her online program. But few of his comments have reverberated as mainstream outlets, long criticized for allowing him to dictate coverage, have become increasingly wary of repeating his falsehoods, especially those involving the election.
While Trump still garners
coverage, Google search results for his name are at their lowest point since 2015, the Washington Post noted last week. And on late-night TV, some have tried to scrub him out entirely, with “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert refusing to say his name.
After five years of wall-towall Trump, the contrast is jarring.
“He was unlike any prior president in the amount of oxygen he sucked up. But he increasingly resembles many former presidents in how little oxygen he now gets,” said Ari Fleischer, who was press secretary to President George W. Bush. Fleischer argued, however, that Trump continues to “loom large” in the party and could return to the spotlight if he chooses to run again.
And though his dominance of cable news has dropped precipitously from its peak in fall 2016, when he was mentioned tens of thousands of times a month, according to GDELT, he remains a presence on cable
news channels nonetheless.
“Two months out of office, he’s still roughly where he was in March of last year when the pandemic largely displaced him,” said Kalev Leetaru, creator of the GDELT Project. “It shows that even two months out of office, he’s still looming large.”
While most of Trump’s statements garner relatively little coverage, some, like one that blasted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack,” dominate cable news, with CNN running with it for 44-plus minutes.
“President Trump is the greatest news generator in American history,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, insisting that “there was never this type of media interest in the post-presidential careers of Clinton, Bush or Obama.” Others see it differently. “I think he lost all momentum when he got pulled from the platforms,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Politics is about momentum and he has none now.”
While Trump has tried to inject himself into news coverage, Brinkley said his comments are largely treated as add-ons to coverage that is focused on other matters.
“It used to be he was shooting tweets like Zeus — they were like thunderbolts from up high — and now it’s little squeaks from the mouse of Mar-a-Lago,” Brinkley said.
Yet Trump remains a commanding figure for the GOP. His endorsement is highly coveted heading into the 2022 Republican primaries. And he continues to publicly flirt with running again for president in 2024.
Holzer believes Trump could reemerge if he is allowed to rejoin Twitter or launches his own social media outlet, which aides say he is still considering.
GOP strategist Alex Conant argued that Trump’s power “is waning by the day” as other Republicans make plans to run in 2024, and said Trump could be taking a more strategic approach if he wants to remain part of the daily conversation.
“When you’re president ... it’s very easy to insert yourself into every news cycle. But once you’ve left office, it has to be more strategic,” Conant said, noting that Trump could announce a book, sit for prime-time interviews or deliver speeches about the future of the party.
Fleischer, too, said Trump could have greater influence by following in the footsteps of Presidents Bush and Obama, whose statements garner attention because they are rare.
“The risk for a former president is you risk starting to be seen as former senators or former congressman or contributors who are on TV on a somewhat regular basis. A former president should be at an elevated posture,” he said. “But Donald Trump has always done things differently with some success.”
‘It used to be he was shooting tweets like Zeus ... like thunderbolts from up high — and now it’s little squeaks from the mouse of Mar-a-Lago.’
— Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian