‘Fake news,’ by far, is at the top of Trump’s Twitter feed Paul Singer
Policy missives are way down the list
President Trump cares more about tearing down the news media than building a wall along the Mexican border — at least according to his Twitter feed.
On Sunday, Trump tweeted a mocked-up wrestling video of him body-slamming and beating a character labeled as CNN. “#FraudNews,” Trump tagged it; critics maligned him for suggesting violence against the media.
Since his election, Trump has published more than 60 tweets disparaging “fake news,” according to a search of the database trumptwitterarchive.com, most of them targeting CNN but also including a range of other media outlets. He did not tweet about “fake news” during the presidential campaign; his first tweet on the subject was Dec. 10, a month after the election. “Reports by @CNN that I will be working on The Apprentice during my Presidency, even part time, are ridicu- lous & untrue - FAKE NEWS!”
But since November, Trump has posted fewer than a dozen tweets about the border wall, a hallmark of his campaign.
He has posted only 11 tweets with the word “trade” and three about NAFTA, the trade agreement he railed against during the campaign. From March to October 2016, Trump tweeted 15 times about NAFTA.
With Congress struggling to pass a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Trump has posted about 80 tweets referring to “health care” or “Obamacare.” But since taking office, he has mentioned vets or veterans in only a dozen tweets, about half as many
“Why does he do it? Because he clearly feels it’s working for him.” Adam Sharp, former head of news and politics for Twitter
times as he has mentioned NBC.
CNN has gotten 27 specific mentions in Trump tweets; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has gotten two.
While Trump gets criticism among the press and political pundits, he clearly gets positive feedback on Twitter. The CNN wrestling tweet quickly became one of Trump’s most retweeted posts ever, with more than 183,000 retweets by Sunday afternoon and close to 300,000 likes.
Given Trump’s long-stated distrust of polling, “that sort of engagement in the form of likes and retweets from regular Americans is probably the only feedback loop he trusts,” said Adam Sharp, former head of news and politics for Twitter. “Why does he do it? Because he clearly feels it’s working for him.”
Sharp also noted that part of the reason Trump’s combative tweets generate so many tweets and likes is because the media publicizes them. “It is fair to say the media gives more attention to his media tweets than his policy ones,” Sharp said.
Trump maintains a much more traditional Twitter presence through the official @POTUS account, which generally documents achievements and daily events at the White House. But that account also retweeted the CNN wrestling tweet.