How Trump Thinks: His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language Peter Oborne, Tom Roberts

805 Pages·3.921 MB·

by  How Trump Thinks: His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language Peter Oborne, Tom Roberts

HOW TRUMP THINKS
His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language
Peter Oborne and Tom Roberts
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
www.headofzeus.com
About How Trump Thinks
The most unusual feature of Donald Trump’s nationalist and populist
campaign for the presidency of the USA was his obsessive use of Twitter.
Like other social media, Twitter has often been assumed to encourage
liberal values and the circulation of facts. Trump’s Tweets, by contrast,
were a constant stream of provocations, insults, conspiracy theories,
‘alternative facts’ and outright lies. And they helped him win power.
Peter Oborne, author of The Rise of Political Lying and Not The Chilcot
Report, analyses Trump’s incendiary presence in all its bewildering guises,
and shows how this fusion of entertainment and cunningly crafted
propaganda has destabilized the world's most powerful democracy.
“I think that maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter.”
“Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, because I get the word out… I might
not be here talking to you right now as President if I didn’t have an honest
way of getting the word out.”
DONALD TRUMP to Fox News, 15 March 2017
Contents
Welcome Page
About How Trump Thinks
Epigraph
Note about URLs
Introduction
2009: Pushing Product: Trump’s early Tweets
2010: “I saw Lady Gaga last night and she was fantastic”
2011: The birth of a new political language: Trump discovers his voice
2012: “Let’s take a closer look at that birth certificate”
2013: “The Russians are playing a very smart game”
2014: “I WOULD BUILD A BORDER FENCE LIKE YOU HAVE
NEVER SEEN BEFORE”
2015: “Let’s Make America Great Again!”
2016: All Aboard the Trump Train
After the Election: FAKE NEWS
Endnotes
Trump Bibliography
A Trump Twitter Lexicon
Twitter Glossary
Acronyms
Acknowledgements
About Peter Oborne and Tom Roberts
Also by Peter Oborne
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
Note about URLs
Please note that, while all original Tweet URLs are included in this digital
edition of How Trump Thinks, some of them may cease to function after
initial publication.
Introduction
Before Donald Trump, politics had been captured by experts. They
manipulated and policed public discourse. They set the rules. They believed
that they alone understood the secrets and had mastered the techniques that
won elections: focus groups; opinion polls; voter targeting.
Trump humiliated then destroyed these experts.
Raymond Chandler said that the thriller writer Dashiell Hammett “gave
murder back to the people who commit it”.
Trump gave politics back to the people who vote.
He was by no means the first to achieve this. Indeed, the United States from
its early history has been ready to respond to leaders and movements that
turned angry and disappointed people against its ruling establishment.
But Trump achieved this in a number of new ways. The most significant of
these was the reinvention of political communication through Twitter.
His Tweets brought politics back to life, playing a huge role in enabling the
earthquake that took place in November 2016. He exploited Twitter’s
ability to express raw sentiment instantly, without nuance or subtext, and its
ability to blur, even extinguish, the boundary between sentiment and fact.
Donald Trump’s Tweets are therefore a serious matter, worthy of study
because they changed America and thus the world.
Donald Trump joined Twitter in 2009, only three years after the medium
was invented. He wanted to promote his personal brand, to sell his books
and to generate publicity for his TV programme, The Apprentice.
At this point he was not yet a politician, but a political groupie who flaunted
his personality and boasted about his achievements. He was positive and
upbeat, and sought out celebrities. He was friendly with Bill and Hillary
Clinton (later to be eviscerated as “Crooked Hilary”).
They were more famous than he was. Trump basked in their celebrity.
He was also generous about President Obama, later to become the subject
of prolonged, vicious attack. At this point Trump’s Tweets display
intellectual and moral horizons defined by TV ratings, ostentatious wealth,
celebrity endorsements and brand management. Politics for him was a
variety of show business.
Peter Costanzo, a marketing expert, introduced Trump to Twitter. Trump
had produced a book: Think Like a Champion : An Informal Education in
Business and Life. Costanzo, an online marketing director, argued that a
Twitter account would boost sales.
Costanzo told the future US President: “Let’s call you @RealDonald
Trump.”
Trump said: “I like it. Let’s do it.”
Costanzo later recalled: “He seemed very excited about the idea of being
able to reach people so directly. I think he immediately got it.” 1
Only 216 people followed Trump when he began tweeting in May 2009,
and for a long time the number increased slowly. 2 His early Tweets were
dull and with good reason: public relations advisers seem to have taken care
of his first utterances in the medium.
The tone changed in the summer of 2011 when he toyed with running in the
following year’s Presidential election. Donald Trump was still fascinated by
celebrities, TV ratings and brand endorsements. But the mood was no
longer so benign. He brutally parted company from the code of mutual
congratulation that defines celebrity relationships.
Now he wrote his own Tweets on his personal Samsung mobile phone. 3
Trump started to use the exclamation marks, the capital letters and the
staccato insults that have defined his Twitter discourse ever since.