Without Twitter, Trump Is Left To Write Tweets He Would Have Said On Paper
from the that's-so-pathetic dept
With both Twitter and Facebook banning Donald Trump's account last month, after he inspired a mob of goons to ransack the Capitol, there has been something of an eerie quiet in the world. Having spent years making sure that every one of his often disconnected-from-reality tweets makes headlines or ruins many peoples' days, the sudden quiet has been kind of odd.
Many people have wondered why he hasn't gone elsewhere. While Parler is still down (but expected to return soon), many were surprised that Trump never used it, since his base basically adopted it as their own. However, late last week it was revealed that the Trump Organization had been negotiating (while Trump was President) with Parler for him to first take a huge equity ownership stake in Parler before joining the platform. For whatever reasons the agreement did not materialize.
However, a Daily Beast article, mostly about Trump's views on Liz Cheney, drops a little hint about how Trump has been dealing with his inability to tweet: he's writing out what he would have tweeted on paper and hoping someone else will tweet it for him:
But due to Twitter’s banning of the @realDonaldTrump account following the Capitol riot that Trump instigated, he has not been able to personally trash Cheney via his once widely read tweets. He has written out insults and observations, several of them about Cheney, but with no ability to tweet them himself, he has resorted to suggesting put-downs for others to use or post to their own Twitter, according to a person with direct knowledge of this new habit.
This is... just incredibly pathetic.
But it's also a combination of weird and a little fascinating. The simple fact is that Trump could easily post these little thoughts online. It would not be difficult for his team to set up a personal webpage that would host these tweets -- which would easily get plenty of attention (perhaps not as much and not as immediately as tweets, but still way more than most people). There's even code out there he could make use of to effectively set up his own mini-Twitter, where it was just him posting his thoughts.
But he doesn't do that. He just writes them out where no one but the people around him can see them. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but one possibility is that the thing he liked most about Twitter was not so much the ability to speak, but the audience it guaranteed. At the very least, that's interesting to think about, considering that we tend to view the use of these platforms more about our ability to speak, and less about our ability to have reach for that speech.
Either way, take some solace in the fact that while most of us can continue to tweet, the former President is sitting around with a sharpie and a piece of paper, analog tweeting into nothingness.
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Filed Under: bans, content moderation, donald trump, social media
Companies: parler, twitter
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What a pleasant start to the week
Normally hearing about an addict going through withdrawals is anything but funny but I gotta say, in this case it's downright hilarious.
After being given the long overdue boot from two major platforms where he had millions listening to him he's reduced to scribbling on pieces of paper and hoping that someone around him will post his ramblings online(risking their accounts as well), and adding to the humor is that he could easily use some of the money he conned from his cultists to set up his own site to post on but he's so obsessed with the audience on the current social media platforms that he apparently refuses to do so(though I suppose it could also be that if he did easily set up such a site it would somewhat ding the 'tech is silencing me!' narrative).
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Trump Thoughts
No need to even connect Trumps mini-twitter to the internet. Just make a word document and tell him everyone can read his thoughts.
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Gab is still a thing, right? Can't Trump use that if he really needs to share his hot takes with the world.
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Maybe he just needs a place to vent his frustrations and was only using twitter as catharsis, and destroying democracy was just a side effect
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Now that Trump is out of office, exiled from social media, he is finally harassed by his greatest enemy...silence.
And I couldn’t be so much more happy about this happening to the worst president in U.S. history.
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No mystery there, Parler doesn't want to get stiffed. They probably said they wanted the money up front and Trump refused.
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"For whatever reasons the agreement did not materialize"
My guess is Donald wanted a family member to be made CEO of Parler and they said no way Donald J.
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I wish that he would read what he writes. It might provoke some self-examination. At least it would for normal people.
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Re:
With people like that it's not enough for them to be able to speak, they believe that they are owed a large audience and if they can't have that then they act as though they've been silenced entirely rather than simply accepting a smaller audience on a platform that actually wants them around.
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Old Man Shouts at Clouds
subtitle: No One Listens
What could possibly be a more fitting end to his campaign of terror?
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He wants as large an audience as possible for his inanity. Gab could never give him anything close to what he had when he was on Twitter.
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I can think of a few, but they all end the same way, and saying what that ending is would put me on FBI watchlists.
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I like to imagine him roaming the halls of Mar-a-Lago in his pyjamas, writing spelling mistake filled insults on post-it notes and sticking them on every screen he can find to try and fill the void.
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Re: Re:
Except that Trump immediately gained millions of followers in the previous election cycle. Now, he ascends to a kind of mythical status, where millions of followers WOULD join him if they could. I think Mike is right, where he considers that part of the attraction of social media is interaction.
Plus, Trump is pretty savvy, so any social media network that he joins would immediately attract millions more followers. I bet he could command a deal, akin to how some video game streamers have negotiated a contract.
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Re: Old Man Shouts at Clouds
Lengthy prison sentence, tried and found guilty for insurrection and sedition and barred from ever serving or even running for public office again, stripping him of the 'retirement' funds that ex-presidents get...
Plenty would be more fitting, but barring a republican party with the courage and integrity to bring the hammer down on Trump striping the narcissistic sociopath of an easy source of attention is at least a passable form of punishment.
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Re: Re: Re:
And yet he hasn't done any of that, so either he knows something you don't about how it wouldn't work out like you seem to think it would or he really wants the audience on the platforms that civilized people use rather than the dregs on those other platforms.
As for 'command a deal', you mean like the one that didn't work out with Parler when he was the gorram president?
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He tried to make one with Parler. Turns out, his history of making deals that benefit only him apparently (and finally) bit him on his flabby orange ass.
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No wonder people aren’t renewing their memberships there.
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Re:
That and they'll no longer be able to hear the content of his classified briefings or get to run the VA.
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Re: Re: Old Man Shouts at Clouds
So if he wants to serve his country again, he can serve a prison sentence.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e5td7-Bpvc
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With apologies to the Beatles
Donald J Trump, writing the words of some rambling that no one will hear
No one comes near
He's not on Twitter, Parler or Facebook or YouTube, it's like he's not there
We couldn't care
All the loony people
Where do they all come from?
All the loony people
Your fake messiah's gone
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Where's he going?
nowhere, man
...Despite having a viewpoint (when there's an audience)....
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Re: Where's he going?
Well, he was the Fool on the Hill.
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Re: Re: Where's he going?
I mean, Trump got the Capitol sacked with a little help from his friends, so…
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Re: Re: Re: Where's he going?
According to a witness, he starts all his new "tweets" with Money, that's what I want. Just keep it away from the Taxman.
Perhaps he's in training to be a Paperback Writer?
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Can't do something again if you never did it to begin with
So if he wants to serve his country again, he can serve a prison sentence.
'Again' would require that he have served the country before, a more accurate phrasing would probably be 'for once in his life'.
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Re: Can't do something again if you never did it to begin with
Oh, the US got served all right.
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Why the continued fixation with Trump? He's not president any more, he's been relegated to the bucket of has-beens alongside Obama, Bush and Clinton. Stop playing sounding board to his narcissistic whimsy. Unlike many of his predecessor who seemed so scared of being viewed as unpopular they would do or say anything to get people to like them, Trump clearly gets more gratification knowing he's aggravating haters than he gets from appeasing those that might agree with him (unfortunately, one often feeds the other). Stop picking at that scab... it may be unattractive, but it only goes away if you leave it alone.
If you continue to obsess, he will never go away. EVER. How did nobody learn that when he was in office?
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Re:
We're not so much fixated on him but laughing at a pariah that has caused us harm for (at least) four years…
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Turnabout is fair play
Trump clearly gets more gratification knowing he's aggravating haters than he gets from appeasing those that might agree with him
Oh he might enjoy trolling people by acting like an ass, but being laughed at and mocked? With his fragile ego that I don't imagine he's a big fan of and that's the entire point here, pointing and laughing at an attention junky starved of his accustomed fix and the laughably pathetic actions his addiction has resulted in.
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Re:
Maybe because he is the first and only president that incited a deadly insurrection on the very body of government that was doing its constitutional duty to count the electoral votes.
Until he is held responsible, and more importantly, held as an example of what happens when a president breaks the law, he should never be allowed to just be "relegated to the bucket of has-beens" and quietly disappear.
A bright line example needs to be set so that any future authoritarian wanna-be dictator president will know what happens when they cross that line.
Until that happens, the Trump regime needs to be dissected and discussed as much as possible so that we can better understand where all the many failures occurred in our system that led up a president trump and the events of Jan 6.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY
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Re: Re:
Setting an example of one is not an effective means of changing the trajectory of others. If it were, there would be no gang activity, there would be no domestic abuse, there would be no insider trading. There is a whole psychology of "comfort" involved that I won't bother to go into here.
"...the Trump regime needs to be dissected and discussed as much as possible..."
Obsessing over Trump's current social network activities (or lack thereof) since leaving office hardly constitutes "dissecting and discussing" his "regime," it's just continuing to give audience to a single sad and pathetic sore loser of an individual. I can't imagine one could hope to learn much about his past by studying the present.
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I wonder which color crayons he's using on the Mar a Lago tablecloths
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Re: Re: Re:
"Except that Trump immediately gained millions of followers in the previous election cycle"
How many were actual people and how many were bots?
"Plus, Trump is pretty savvy, so any social media network that he joins would immediately attract millions more followers"
I look forward to him doing that, if only so we can get people like you to stop trying to get the government to seize the property of people who don't want him anywhere near them.
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Re:
Well, if any lesson should have been learned by people from Trump's real estate dealings, it's that he really doesn't like paying contractors, so it would be good business sense to make such a demand.
More likely, however, is that the deal hadn't gone through before Parler got their asses kicked off AWS and even Trump isn't dumb enough to make an equity deal with a company that has no property. Now that they're getting back up on Russian soil and their CEO has apparently been fired for daring to want to kick Nazis off the platform, he'll try again.
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Re:
"Why the continued fixation with Trump?"
Maybe things like this (I saw a more recent quote yesterday saying a similar thing, but I didn't find it on a quick Google search before my morning coffee):
"Lindsey Graham Thinks Donald Trump Will Remain Strongest Voice in Republican Party for Years"
https://www.newsweek.com/lindsey-graham-thinks-donald-trump-will-remain-strongest-voice- republican-party-years-1563190
Ignoring him doesn't mean he goes away, it just means you're not shining a light on the cockroaches still in power who still support him.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Setting an example of one is not an effective means of changing the trajectory of others."
It's more effective than pretending he has no power and influence after leaving office, and that he should get away with the crimes just because he didn't have his impeachment trial before a certain date.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I look forward to him doing that, if only so we can get people like you to stop trying to get the government to seize the property of people who don't want him anywhere near them.
Why would having a bunch of them gathering in their own cesspit stop them from demanding that the platforms people actually want to use stop showing them the door? It's not like they're going to stop thinking that they have a right to an audience on a platform of their choice just because they find another platform willing to put up with them.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well it wouldn't in reality. My thought process was just this - if Trump were to successfully join or set up a social media platform that attracted millions to speak to him, then it would be concrete evidence against the narrative that the only way conservative voices can be heard is by co-opting platforms that don't want them. It would both provide a handy counter-example to their claims and a reason for them to stop trying to dismantle section 230 protections now that they have a popular destination to go to that also depends on them.
In reality, this won't happen because Trump would not be able to attract that many people alone and the type of person it would attract is as toxic to right-wing echo chambers as they are elsewhere. But, if he were to actually achieve such a thing it would be good for everyone.
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Re: What a pleasant start to the week
I couldn't agree more. And while I feel some level of satisfaction when karma comes around to settle a few scores, I try not to gloat or revel in another's pain. But for Trump, knowing that he is incapable of empathy or sympathy, and lacks even the most basic moral understanding that would inform him when to fake concern for others, apologize regardless of a lack of remorse, or simply know when to back off, if only to make his own life easier and smooth ruffled feathers, I am basking in joyous thoughts of him seeing planes towing signs calling him a loser, resigned to writing his petty, pathetic grievances on paper that no one will see, confused by his current situation not reflecting his deluded belief of self importance. I mean, damn, I love it. I don't wish any harm, I couldn't even muster sympathy for his family if he suffered some unexpected tragic end, and he has young grandchildren.
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Re:
"Stop picking at that scab... it may be unattractive, but it only goes away if you leave it alone"
That is true for some flesh wounds that are non malignant.
(note, I am not a medical doctor - not that you would listen anyway)
Since we are doing physiological analogies -
Donald and his sick-o-phant followers are a cancer upon the body public and needs to be removed.
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Re:
He probably writes on the bathroom walls while sitting on the golden commode.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Setting an example of one is not an effective means of changing the trajectory of others."
This could be the topic of a very interesting thesis, you got a link?
Regardless of whether this is the case or not ... we need to at least go thru the motions of equal enforcement under the law or risk the complete collapse of civilization into anarchy. All his illegal activity needs to be made public so that everyone can see why he is the worst president ever and should never attain high office again. Only then can his cult followers let him off the hook as we all know they are going to do. Even then, we are not out of the woods.
"If it were, there would be no gang activity, there would be no domestic abuse, there would be no insider trading. There is a whole psychology of "comfort" involved that I won't bother to go into here."
This is what you present in support of your claim?
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Re: Re: What a pleasant start to the week
That's an extremely fair viewpoint because Trump's family had been harmful in some way or another to the nation.
I would feel sorry for Barron Trump, though. He did nothing wrong despite having two shitty parents.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Except that Trump immediately gained millions of followers in the previous election cycle."
Yeah, unfortunately some 73 million americans are so deluded and malicious they believed a failed white supremacist entrepreneur who had to turn to reality TV when the banks stopped being naíve enough to bail him out and was on a 400 million dollar debt to the russian state bank was a fine choice for POTUS.
It's not impossible that Gab or Parler might rise from the ashes if Trump chose to become the figurehead there, I'll give you that. Even Alex Jones has a staunch following eager to buy his silver nitrate anti-mindcontrol toothpaste and hear the latest on the sinister liberal plot to turn the frogs gay.
Some people are just that incurably dumb. And Trump will continue to rely on them to pay for his expenses until they learn better, or fall for a new prophet.
So, Koby, with Gab and Parler around, and those 73 million sheep blindly panting after Dear Leader, why the hell should Facebook and Twitter, catering to another type of audience and membership, need to allow the drooling racists and bigots leeway on their private servers?
Please tell us there's something other than "Today Facebook, tomorrow, ze world!" motivating this zeal of yours.
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Re:
"Gab could never give him anything close to what he had when he was on Twitter."
Maybe not quite true. There are still 73 million gullible morons willing to follow dear leader blindly. Even assuming half of them drop off disillusioned that's still going to be many millions of followers eager to provide him a following.
Somehow the idea of Trump being Gab's new poster child is...fitting.
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Re: Re: Can't do something again if you never did it to begin wi
Let's hope he won't be "serving" the prison sentence the same way he served his country. That'd probably mean handing some undeserving schmuck a vacation behind bars.
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Re:
Because he's not in jail yet? D'uh!
So isn't Hillary BTW, but the Drumpfist ass clown fans didn't stop that from swallowing his other lies either, did it?
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Re: Re: Re:
Considering how much power he wielded over his followers and his fellow GOPQ members on social media, and how many of the GOPQ were afraid to stand up to him because they worried he would send out a mean tweet about them, I think discussing his Twitter activity is a large part of "dissecting and discussing his regime".
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Maybe he'll compile the notes later for his book, "Mein Drumpf".
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DAM
Wheres my Bird cage?
Now wheres my bird..
Hold it, I have a cat,
and a litter box.
That works. Just need more newspaper.
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Re:
"Maybe he'll compile the notes later for his book, "Mein Drumpf"."
Well, at least Hitler had the chutzpah to march along when the Beer Hall Coup was attempted. Cadet Bonespur couldn't even be arsed to lead his sturmabteilung from the front.
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There's always myspace ..
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Re: Re: Re:
Why is Koby's comment flagged? Nothing he said was inappropriate. It was an innocuous opinion on Trump vis-a-vis social media. He even said your Masnick was right about something.
You guys are terrified of even the chance of encountering someone with whom you disagree.
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Those who can't learn from history ... are fucking stupid
The fact you guys consider Trump the worst president ever shows just how self-absorbed and historically ignorant you are.
The concept of Trump being worse than the many presidents who got us involved in needless foreign wars and got millions of peoples killed is laughable.
In no responsible, sensible American's opinion is Trump even close to being as repugnant as Wilson or Bush II or LBJ.
You're stuck in your tiny bubble and say Trump is worse than people who sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to their deaths for no good reason ... all because he made some rude Tweets.
Perfectly sums up the modern era.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Why is Koby's comment flagged?"
He's a known hit-and-run troll who regularly posts stupid stuff then runs from the thread as soon as he's challenged. He's slightly less openly idiotic with his comment than he usually is on this subject, but he's a known idiot who refuses to engage or learn from conversation with others, so he's marked as a troll.
"You guys are terrified of even the chance of encountering someone with whom you disagree."
Nope. Do you notice how several people addressed his comments directly, asked further questions and asked him to back up his comment with further discussion, but the coward has never returned to answer the questions?
That's the opposite of the bullshit you just spouted.
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Re: Those who can't learn from history ... are fucking stupid
"Trump is worse than people who sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to their deaths for no good reason ... all because he made some rude Tweets."
I'd say the fact that he caused around 500,000 Americans to needlessly lose their lives after he fired the pandemic team, called COVID a hoax, refused to take action until it was too late, refused to aid the first affected states because they didn't vote for him, publicly undermined the world leading experts on the issue, held superspreader events and did so little to prepare for vaccine distribution that his successor found there was literally no plan might be something in most peoples' minds over and above the Twitter nonsense.
But, whatever you have to lie about in order to pretend you're right and everyone else is wrong, I suppose...
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