WASHINGTON (AP) – @realDonaldTrump, the Twitter feed that grew from a reality TV star’s random musings to the bat of a US president, died Friday. It was not even 12 years old.
The provocative handle was born by a New York real estate mogul who used it to help him become the 45th US president. It started with a May 4, 2009 tweet promoting Donald Trump’s upcoming performance on David Letterman’s show.
It died more than 57,000 tweets later, with Trump using some of his latest posts on the powerful platform to feel sorry for a pro-Trump crowd besieging the halls of Congress in a deadly attack as lawmakers confirmed his defeat.
The account collapsed when Twitter announced on Friday that it was permanently pulling the plug on @realDonaldTrump, out of concern Trump would use it for “further incitement to violence.” Trump replied that he would “ build our own platform in the near future. We will not be silenced! “
A budding politician but a seasoned salesman, Trump realized the power of social media in a way that few other politicians did. And he wielded it with unprecedented power to diminish his opponents, shape elections, and shape reality – at least in the eyes of his supporters.
Early on, @realDonaldTrump seemed innocent enough. The owner, who had a lot of experience marketing casinos, real estate and even Oreos, mainly used the platform to promote his books and media appearances and to give friends a friendly plug.
But when Trump began to seriously play with a run in the White House, it became a tool for scorching opponents and shaping his nationalist ‘America First’ philosophy.
He used his poison equally, whether it be insulting celebrity enemies (Rosie O’Donnell was “rude, rude, obnoxious and stupid”) or using xenophobia to defame a country (Britain does his best to cover up their enormous Muslim problem “).
Peter Costanzo, at the time an online marketing director for the publishing house who released Trump’s book Think Like a Champion, helped Trump get onto the platform.
Twitter was still in its infancy at the time. But Costanzo, who later joined The Associated Press, saw the then platform with 140 characters per message as a new tool the real estate mogul could use to boost sales and reach a wider audience.
Costanzo was given seven minutes to make his pitch for Trump – “Not five minutes, not 10,” he recalled in an interview in 2016.
Trump liked what he heard.
“I said, ‘Let’s call you @realDonaldTrump – you’re the real Donald Trump,’” recalls Costanzo. He thought about it for a moment and said, ‘I like it. Let’s do it.'”
Except for Trump’s family, no one seemed off-limits by his Twitter wrath. Trump attacked Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, 2016 political rivals, current executives, former executives, the Republican Party, and cable networks.
@realDonaldTrump was prolific: On days when the owner was particularly agitated, such as during impeachment proceedings, he sent out more than 100 tweets.
In the most popular tweet, on October 2, 2020, @realDonaldTrump announced that Trump and first lady Melania Trump had contracted the coronavirus. The post received 1.8 million likes and nearly 400,000 retweets, according to Factba.se., Which follows the president’s habits and comments on social media.
The account was used to announce layoffs. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heard of his impeachment in a tweet.
The account threatened opponents in the most colorful of terms. Before Trump “fell in love” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un through secretly exchanged letters, Trump used Twitter to call him a “missile man” and vowed to respond with “fire and fury” if the authoritarians were United States dared to attack.
@realDonaldTrump regularly spread misleading, false and malicious claims, such as the baseless ideas that protesters at Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings were being paid by liberal philanthropist George Soros and that November’s election was ravaged by voter fraud.
Trump often tweeted well after midnight and before dawn, a catharsis for grievances (witch hunt! Crooked Hillary, Russia, Russia, Russia, FAKE NEWS, etc.) For the most part, @realDonaldTrump and his 280 character posts effectively allowed Trump to work around the Washington media establishment and reinforce the message of allies.
Sometimes @realDonaldTrump stumbled. Trump deleted 1,166 tweets and had 471 tweets flagged by Twitter for misinformation in his last months on the platform, Factba.se said.
In one of his most memorable Twitter stumbles in May 2017, Trump sent (and later deleted) a cryptic tweet after midnight that read, “Despite the constant negative press conference.”
The gibberish set the Twitterverse ablaze with speculation. Theories include that the tweeter-in-chief fell asleep halfway through the message and that the man who once bragged about having ‘the best words’ added a new word to the lexicon to correctly describe the collusion between Democrats and the press .
The mystery has never been solved.
Sam Nunberg, a longtime – and now former – Trump adviser, said that in the summer of 2011, after Trump announced he was inactive in 2012 but wanted to remain relevant, his team decided to start using social media to boost his profile. strengthen.
They chose to focus on Twitter, where he already had an account and several hundred thousand followers. Nunberg recalls sending Trump reports daily about the growth of his followers. Trump sometimes returned it with handwritten notes – “Why not more?” “Why so slow?”
They celebrated when they reached the million.
“Twitter certainly played a vital role in building Donald Trump as a political figure in Republican politics, and he enjoyed it immensely,” said Nunberg. ‘Remember, he always said,’ I wanted a newspaper. This is great, it’s like a newspaper without the losses. ”
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., took to Twitter shortly after the platform banned @realDonaldTrump to note that it still allows Iran’s supreme leader “and countless other dictatorial regimes” to use the platform, but his father can not tolerate.
“Mao would be proud,” sneered Trump Jr ..
Ultimately, @realDonaldTrump offered a glimpse into Trump’s state of mind for more than a decade, a period when the TV star turned ‘Apprentice’ into the 45th US president.
Along the way, when historians want a glimpse of Trump’s thoughts on the issues of his day – everything from actress Kristen Stewart’s treatment of co-star Robert Pattinson to the president’s views on Russian interference in the 2016 election – you can the first stop are inevitable. be one of the many digital archives that kept @realDonaldTrump’s tweets.
With Trump, whatever the topic, there’s always a tweet for that.
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Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Nancy Benac and Zeke Miller contributed to the reporting.