You have undoubtedly heard that Donald Trump announced on Fox News yesterday that he was not going to return to Twitter, even if allowed to do so, because of his commitment to Truth Social, a platform he never uses. Naturally, the word on the street is that Trump, liar that he is, will of course return to Twitter and tout suite. An unnamed GOPer says that is something that Democrats should pray for. I have to admit, the logic is sound. Politico:
The news that ELON MUSK is buying Twitter has thrown Washington into a tizzy over one major question: Will DONALD TRUMP return to his old favorite social media platform and start tweeting again?
As it turns out, no one is more petrified of this than members of Trump’s own party.
On Monday night, in a series of calls and texts with several top GOP insiders, every single one of them told us that they hoped the former president stays the hell away from Twitter, lest he sink their chances at flipping the House and Senate. Some of his allies even think that a return to his old Twitter habits could damage his own brand ahead of a possible third presidential bid in 2024.
“If I’m a Democrat, I’d pray that Elon Musk puts Trump right back on Twitter,” said one House GOP leadership aide, who asked not to be named to speak candidly. “I don’t think it costs Republicans the House, but it certainly will elevate Trump’s opinions — and is going to put Republican candidates and members back having to answer for that.”
The person added: “It’s enough to create headaches — and it’s enough to probably cost us a couple seats.”
Some may find this a rather surprising reaction, given that many Republicans have both accused Big Tech of censoring conservative voices (the former president being the most prominent example) and showered praise on the Musk takeover. But as is often the case with the GOP and all things Trump, privately, they feel very differently.
To be sure, there’s a lot yet unknown about whether or not Trump will return to Twitter.
Will Twitter allow it? Questions abound over whether Musk’s new leadership team will allow the resurrection of the now-defunct @realDonaldTrump handle. (The Tesla and SpaceX impresario, however, has blasted Twitter’s permanent bans and what he views as its censorship of free speech.)
Will Trump even want to rejoin? Trump said on Fox News on Monday that he doesn’t intend to return to the platform, and will instead stick to his own social media startup, Truth Social. “I am not going on Twitter,” he said. “I am going to stay on Truth.”
Here’s the thing: Nobody really believes him.
Republicans we spoke with predicted that Trump won’t be able to resist the urge to see millions of retweets and likes on his posts, to say nothing of his ability to drive any news cycle with a message to his 88 million-plus followers. Could he stay on Truth Social? Sure, but that platform has been something of a disaster (read here and here). Trump himself seems to realize this, and has posted on it only once.
“The lure of Twitter … may prove as irresistible for Trump as it is a potential return of a migraine headache for Republicans, who have not missed the tweets and the barrage of questions from the Trump-generated outrage du jour,” said DOUG HEYE, a longtime GOP political strategist watching this closely. “There is no faster way for Trump to be front and center [in] the political conversation than rejoining Twitter, and he knows that.”
The entire situation is giving those of us who covered the House GOP during the Trump administration a case of deja vu. Back in the day, Trump would tweet something outrageous in the morning, and reporters would spend the rest of the day asking Republican officeholders for their reactions. In fact, then-Speaker PAUL RYAN was so sick of journalists peppering him with questions about Trump’s latest incendiary utterance that he took to denying he’d ever seen them and couldn’t comment. “I haven’t seen the tweet!” he’d say, dodging. We’d all roll our eyes.
These days, however, it’s more than just a pesky annoyance for the GOP. For a while now, most Republicans and quite a few Democrats have scoffed at the notion that the midterms would center on anything other than voters’ kitchen-table concerns — inflation, gas prices and crime. But if Trump is out there spewing falsehoods about the 2020 election on Twitter every day, putting his every thought into the ether for analysis and debate, the former president will help at least some Democrats frame the 2022 election not as a referendum on President JOE BIDEN, but as a choice between two parties: one led by Biden, the other led by Trump.
“He has the world’s biggest microphone on Twitter,” said one Republican working on GOP campaigns. “He could do a lot of good with it — or bad. It will make every GOP politician’s life more difficult.”
That’s to say nothing of the nightmare GOP leaders will have if they flip Congress and suddenly have to compromise with a Democratic president on government funding and the debt ceiling while facing incoming fire from Trump online. “This isn’t going to save Democrats’ majority, but it would make governing and passing those big, must-pass bipartisan items all the more excruciating,” said BRENDAN BUCK, a close former aide to Ryan who remembers the drama of Trump’s first two years well himself.
Devin Nunes, unless he goes ahead and jumps off the ledge now, will undoubtedly share the unhappy tidings with Trump that the stock of Truth Social dropped 13% yesterday. Can’t wait to see where it’s at at the closing bell today. My prediction is further south, still.
Now here is why Mitch McConnell’s worse nightmare is Trump returning to Twitter. The Bulwark:
While concerns about the Russian bots and blarmy bigots returning to the hellfeed where news happens does have merit, let me offer a countervailing perspective about the impact of the Twitter acquisition.
Musk Twitter might also be a disaster for a couple of groups who cosmically deserve it:
1) Mitch McConnell and the establishment Republican ostriches who are doing everything in their power to put their heads in the sand and pretend Donald Trump doesn’t exist (unless they need to cash in on his name and likeness).
2) The Nazi grifters who started the various Deploratwitter knockoffs like TRUTH, Parler, and Gettr and are now set to be totally pwned by Twitter offering these very fine people the same freedom to shitpost in front of bigger audiences.
So if the two-faced Trumpists and the worst MAGA scammers are going to suffer, might we consider squeaking out one cheer for Musk. Or a half a cheer? Or even just a mild affirmative grunt?
The case for their suffering is as follows:
In Georgia on Insurrection Eve, we saw how a big Trump megaphone could divide the Republican base, resulting in political success for the Democrats. The election fraud mass formation psychosis led Trump voters in rural parts of the state to stay home rather than participate in yet another RIGGED contest while a small percentage of Atlanta Kemp/Raffensperger Republicans refused to be a party to the anti-democratic horror show. As a result, Georgia elected the state’s first black and Jewish senators—on the same day!—despite the fact that both had fewer votes than their GOP opponents during the November election.
A repeat of that is the worst-case scenario for the GOP at a time when the political environment is looking rather rosy for them.
Back in January, Bloomberg’s Joshua Green interviewed experts on the possible ways Republicans could screw the pooch in the midterms. Liam Donovan offered this hypothetical: “For the last year Trump has been in a straitjacket where he can’t harm his own party . . . Maybe he gets back on Twitter, there’s no bigger wild card than letting the tiger out of its cage.”
Rawr.
Ideas of what Twitter will become under Elon Musk’s ownership are now bouncing off the walls of the internet. I must say that of all the rationales I’ve read so far, these two pieces make the most sense to me.
But on the other hand, Trump has a way of screwing everything up in a manner never before seen by doing the unexpected, so there is always that wild card element.
If I had to hazard a guess, I think that he’ll be baaaack.
Stay tuned.
I suspect musk likes to stir the turd just for the attention it garners him. Putting former guy back on twitter will be just the sort of turd he loves stirring.
The really unfortunate fact is our TV addicted, money worshipping, & fame seeking culture has produced 75 million morons who are either too lazy or stupid to be responsible enough to challenge the propaganda fed to them. We have met the enemy & the enemy is US. Musk & fox & all the rest would run for cover if we valued knowledge, critical thinking, & had a moral compass. How far does the rot go? We’ll know after the midterms.
As I’ve said previously, Musk, in charge of Twitter, will wind up doing the same thing he currently accuses Twitter of doing: Censoring things that he doesn’t like.
I still think someone needs to post claims (well, lies, until proven otherwise–but who needs to prove anything on Twitter?) that Musk is a pedophile and that he buys aborted fetuses and feasts on them and all other sorts of outlandish stuff and let the claims get retweeted and spread. We’ll find out exactly how fast the Musk-hammer comes down on the account(s) responsible for posting the original tweets and retweets.