Yes, Trump’s Tweets do Matter...But the Ones that Should be Paying the Most Attention do NOT Care

It is no secret that the president is possibly the most powerful person on Twitter; it is also no surprise that he love sharing his every single thought for all to read. For better or worse, each day (multiple time a day) we are treated to the enigmatic thoughts that pass through the president’s head. In the past, most of there were nothing more than pure enjoyment as we got some insight in to the ridiculousness that is Donald Trump. We laughed, we cried, and then we moved on as his thoughts were nothing more than “Covfefe” to get us through the day.

However, because of the ridiculousness of the tweets, we started to tune them out and ignore them. They became a sideshow to laugh at, but nothing to worry about so we quit paying attention. In reality, they were giving us insight in to who this man actually was, which, now, is more important than ever.

Over the last few weeks, Trump has given us more insight than ever before in to who he is and why he does the things that he does. Unfortunately, what we are discovering is that he is exactly who many thought he was. Since just last month, Trump has asked the only black driver in main NASCAR series to apologize for an investigated hate crime (that he had nothing to do with), claimed NASCAR is losing fans because they banned the confederate flag, and claimed that a Black Lives Matter mural in NYC would be hateful in some way. Trump has been called a racist for the better part of his presidency, and his most loyal followers have been happy to wave it off as falsehoods. However, Trump has seemingly leaned fully in to racist image he has been given as a way to appeal to his most loyal base that would never abandon him. Do they care that he is exposing himself entirely on Twitter? Of course not, because most of them are either not on Twitter or are willing to wave off his tweets as a bunch of nothing.

Additionally, on many occasions over the past few months, Trump has been more than happy to jump right in to the conspiracy theorists inner circle, something he has been doing since the ”Birther Movement” days. Just last month, he openly speculated that Joe Scarborough could have been involved with the death of an employee, claimed that mail-in voting would corrupt the election (despite mail-in voting himself), and claimed that his so-called “Obamagate” was worse than Watergate despite zero evidence and the hesitation of nearly all fellow Republicans to accuse Obama of anything. What Trump is really saying, behind all of his theorizing, is that he is feeling the heat of an election cycle in which he is buried in low approval ratings due to scandals, the pandemic, and his failure to properly address the protests. By throwing out his most insane theories (that only his most mindless followers would believe), he is distracting from himself in hopes that swing voters and Obama-Trump voters will not notice he is flailing.

Racism and conspiracy-theorizing aside, Trump has been more active than ever on Twitter in terms of bashing opponents (Sleepy Joe) and embracing the fringes (Qanon). If people took the time to actually examine his tweets, they would see a clear picture of the individual that is Donald Trump. They would see a thin-skinned man who cannot stand being disliked and refuses to accept that he is not the greatest individual alive. They would see a man that is racist at the core, and is finally starting to lean in to it to make sure he does not alienate that bloc of his voters. They would also see a man that is so used to getting his own way that he will do anything and everything to flip the script if he does not.

Will any of this matter to his loyalists? Of course not. They will write it off as him being misunderstood, misquoted, or twisted. They will say that his tweets mean nothing, and they are not actually who he is. More importantly, there will be those that truly believe he is exactly who he says he is, but it does not matter because they will never vote for “any of them socialists”. Yes, it is true that Trump could actually shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose voters because his followers have embraced all parts of him for better or worse. Unfortunately, that is the problem. Trump’s tweets matter immensely because they give us both insight in to exactly who he is and what he is thinking. However, the ones that need to pay the most attention to what he is saying are the ones that will never care, and that’s the problem we have the most.