If there’s one person who you wouldn’t want to follow on Twitter, it’s Donald Trump. The U.S. president-elect has been dubbed “The President-Elect” and has amassed over 3 million followers on the social media platform.
With such a large audience, it’s easy for Trump to spread his messages and for people to fall under his spell. But what exactly is the nature of that spell? And is it a bad thing?
To find out, we can look at the Twitter accounts of Donald Trump and Robert Pattinson, the actor who plays the villain in the new James Bond film and has emerged as one of the president-elect’s closest friends. (Pattinson is also one of the film’s producers.)
Let’s start with the good. As the New York Times Magazine points out:
“The President-Elect has shown himself to be an indefatigable tweeter, often posting several times a day. One of his most successful strategies has been to surround himself with smart, engaging people who are also prolific tweeters and who drive engagement and interest in his topic. The result is that his followers spend more time and get more from the platform than the average user does.”
This is a virtuous cycle. As the president-elect gains more and more followers, he becomes an even more enticing target for cybercriminals and fake accounts that want to infiltrate his audience. (Trump has also been dogged by accusations of ‘fake news’ and ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 election.)
But let’s move on to the bad. As Vox’s Andrew Proctor wrote in August 2016, “[T]he truth is that while Donald Trump may appear to be an independent and unusual politician, he is actually a very traditional President-Elect in terms of his social media activity.”
While Trump claims that he isn’t ‘tied’ to any particular political party, his voting record shows that he is in fact a Republican. And as Proctor notes, “[T]hese are all carefully curated, highly engaging accounts that play on people’s fears and insecurities, and tell them what they want to hear without offering too much conflicting information.”
It’s this combination of qualities — traditional politics and a willingness to play on people’s fears — that makes Trump such a dangerous and conniving politician. And it’s precisely this that makes him such a perfect fit for the role of Bond villain. In the film, SPECTRE (short for ‘Superspy Receptors for Extra-Terrestrial Topography’ — the organization which the villainy is based on) launches a Twitter attack on 007 using the pseudonym ‘Q.’ (That’s right; Trump is now ‘Captain America.’ This is what happens when you let other people run your life.)
After the SPECTRE attack, James Bond turns to his gadget-laden Q Branch to neutralize the threat. And it’s this connection to the latest James Bond movie that makes Trump so attractive to the baddies. (The connection also provides the opportunity for SPECTRE to wreak more havoc on the world, as it does in the film.)
Trump has even bragged about his role in the upcoming Bond film. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I want to be in movies,’ ” he said in August 2016. “It’s like, ‘I need something to happen.’ And then it happens.”
Now, it’s not necessarily a bad thing for an audience to be attracted to someone’s personality and to desire to know more about that person. Indeed, for politicians and celebrities alike, social media can be a powerful tool for self-promotion and outreach, connecting them to a community that shares their interests and values. (The fact that the person with the most followers tends to become the most powerful within a country is proof of this.)
But there is a difference between using social media to promote your agenda and using it to manipulate and deceive people. In the latter case, you run the very real risk of polarizing and dividing a society — and perhaps even inciting violent unrest — simply for the sake of gaining power.
That, my friends, is what is so insidious about Donald Trump and his relationship with social media. This is a man who has used Twitter to promote such divisive and dangerous ideas as ‘birtherism’ (the conspiracy theory that claims President Obama is not a citizen of the United States), and who has suggested that the next mass shooting could be linked to the fact that people are ‘unable’ to leave Twitter. (Yes, the man whose slogan is ‘Make America Great Again’ has advocated that the country should go back to the days before social media.)
On December 19, 2016, a week after Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election, Robert Pattinson tweeted congratulations to the 45th president-elect. He also shared a link to a Times article that profiled the “daredevil” behavior of Trump during the election campaign. The article noted that Trump “appears to be enjoying the chaos” and “applauds his knack for creating headlines.’
That same day, Trump tweeted, “Thank you Robert Pattinson for the very nice words. You are very talented & creative!” And then, ominously, he added, “And your future will be even more amazing!” (For more on Trump and Robert Pattinson, see here.)
The following day, 20 December 2016, Robert Pattinson tweeted:
“The President-Elect has since deleted this tweet, and presumably many others like it, but when it comes to online campaigning during the 2016 election, it’s best not to ask questions.”
So, what should you do if you want to follow the example of James Bond and keep your gadgets and wits about you? The answer is simple: be smart! (And, yes, be warned: cyber-criminals and pranksters prey on social media users, so keep your guard up at all times.)
As with many other issues, it comes down to common sense and an understanding of one’s own limits. If you see something that makes you worried or uncomfortable, it’s best to speak up rather than to try and sweep it under the carpet. (Believe it or not, there are limits to how much dirt one can find on one’s own ‘dear uncle’ — even if he has a disturbing habit of bragging about sex with supermodels and promising to imprison his political opponents.)
Of course, if you truly believe that the president-elect is a dangerous individual who must not be allowed close to the levers of power, you have many options available to you. (Your ‘dear uncle’ is indeed a strange creature, but his strange ways make him a force to be reckoned with in the global scheme of things. It’s no small thing that he is now, officially, the president of the United States.)
The ‘Real’ Donald Trump
For those who have followed the news over the past few years, it should come as no great shock that Donald Trump is not, in fact, as clean-cut and wholesome as he would have you believe. (If you thought Trump would be a perfect husband and father, you might want to consider the fact that his former wife, Marla, filed for divorce in 2010, claiming that he was a “controlling person” who had “verbally, mentally and physically abused” her for years. It was an ugly and shameful episode that received widespread media coverage at the time.)
Yes, the Donald Trump you’ve heard about in the news is a carefully crafted persona that he has used to great effect in his public career. But what you might not know is that this is not the ‘real’ Donald Trump. This is the Donald Trump that women find appealing — and, in many cases, abusive:
The darker side of Donald Trump was on full display when it was discovered that he had an affair with a porn star named Stormy Daniels shortly after his wife gave birth to their son, Barron. (They were also heavily in debt at the time and were going through extreme financial hardships. But still, he cheated on his pregnant wife. How gross is that?)
Daniels, who claims to have had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, described their time together in an interview with In Touch Weekly:
“I did not sleep with the President. We had sexual contact, but it was not sexual intimacy. I was not interested in having sexual contact with Mr. Trump. No offense to the Trump fans out there, but he’s not my type. ”