The tweets that define a presidency
“Did you see what the president tweeted?”
It doesn’t matter on which side of the aisle you sit or if you plop down right in the middle. At some point since the inauguration, furious or elated, you probably uttered those words.
President Trump has parted with many conventions of the highest office over the past four years, but perhaps none has been more visible than his keeping of a personal Twitter account.
He has used it to announce policy, move markets, attack the press, dispute reports, insult enemies and energize his base — all unvarnished by a journalist’s interpretation.
“Without Twitter, there would be no Donald Trump presidency,” said CNN senior political analyst Kirsten Powers. “And I think he knows that.”
Politicians have always taken to the latest technology to craft their images, whether President Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” on the radio or President John Kennedy’s news conferences on television. Twitter has offered Trump immediacy and rendered pesky handlers somewhat obsolete, as reaching his 87 million followers takes one click of a button.
“The greatest weakness politicians have is they’re inauthentic. Behind closed doors, they do offensive things. But when they’re in public, they act with perfect decorum,” said Ari Fleischer, a Fox News contributor who served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary. “I think one of the reasons Trump remains politically competitive is because a lot of Americans credit him with being authentic, even if he goes too far.”
Jamie Weinstein, a conservative political journalist and host of the podcast “The Jamie Weinstein Show,” predicted that the account has so resonated with Trump’s base and so infuriated his critics that “when the president leaves office, his Twitter account still will probably be the most powerful Twitter account in the world.”
But not all tweets are created equal. As Election Day approaches, we selected the defining tweets of Trump’s presidency, the ones that made the most impact and highlighted major themes from the past four years.
THE MARKET MOVER
He wasn’t even the president yet. Seventeen days before the inauguration, as the sun was rising, Trump tweeted this threat to the automotive company.
Google searches for GM shot up 200 percent, while the company’s stock value declined by 24 cents, a .07 percent drop thanks to 26 words. The corporation responded within an hour and a half with a statement: “All Chevrolet Cruze sedans sold in the U.S. are built in GM’s assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio,” adding that the Cruze was assembled in Mexico for “global markets.”
“Donald Trump’s Twitter account is the greatest bully pulpit that has ever existed,” Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, told The Washington Post at the time. “In 140 characters, he can change the direction of a Fortune 100 company, he can notify world leaders and he can also notify government agencies that business as usual is over.”
Turns out that wasn’t just spin. And Trump’s tweets have affected global markets so often that analysts at JPMorgan created an index measuring the probability that his tweets moved the bond market, dubbing it the “Volfefe Index.”
THE MYSTERIOUS TYPO
Just after midnight, Trump sent that strange sentence fragment into the world, where it remained until its deletion some five and a half hours later. As it was relentlessly retweeted and liked, the press — this reporter included — jumped to cover the typo, as if it were a matter of national security.
“Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!” Trump cheekily tweeted the next morning.
“I think the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” then-press secretary Sean Spicer said at a news conference. (Narrator voice: They didn’t.)
Personalized license plates bearing the typo were claimed across the country (but not in Georgia, where it was banned). Dozens upon dozens of applications for the word poured into the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Linguists sought its pronunciation. A bill in the House was named after it, as was a racehorse. The bill failed; the horse won.
For Trump’s critics, “covfefe” represented incompetence. For his supporters, it displayed both relatability — Who doesn’t make typos? — and proof that the media will make a mountain out of any mole hill of a mistake. Some conspiratorial-minded ones acted as if they knew exactly what it meant. A meme was born.
“It’s not your typical auto-correct. … It’s this odd, weird, hysterical grouping of letters,” said Eric Schnure, an ex-speechwriter for former vice president Al Gore who has written jokes for politicians on both sides of the aisle. “The follow-up is what made it live. We can only guess, but if he had said, ‘That’s funny. I typed that while falling asleep,’ would the story be the same?”
Fleischer, though, argued that the typo may have been a net positive for the president. “I get a kick out of reporters who chide him for spelling errors in his tweets. I mean, I’m sorry, but those reporters come across as the scolding schoolteacher we never liked. And Trump is once again seen as real,” he said. “Plus, it was just a funny word.”
THE TROLLING GIF
Trump certainly doesn’t keep his feelings about the mainstream media private (or vice versa). He’s tweeted the term “fake news” more than 800 times since his inauguration.
Never was his loathing more evident than when he tweeted a GIF showing him performing in a WWE professional wrestling match, tackling and punching his opponent, who had a CNN logo superimposed on his head.
Political historian Julian Zelizer said that it “embodies everything” about Trump’s Twitter presence. “It’s outrageous. It has a violent message, which you can say, if you’re a defender, that it’s just meant to be a joke. And it’s going after an institution that he sees as oppositional.” (The White House and the Trump campaign did not return requests for comment for this article.)
“Every president has fought with the national media at some point,” Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley said, recalling a letter that Harry Truman sent to a Washington Post critic threatening to punch him in the nose, or Franklin Roosevelt “handing an imaginary dunce cap” to a reporter and telling him to sit in the corner. Those, however, weren’t public declarations.
The CNN GIF was reportedly first posted to Reddit’s now-banned far-right message board r/The_Donald by a user who later apologized for it. How Trump found it remains a mystery (the White House claims he didn’t get it from the online message board). Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, told the Guardian at the time, “Singling out individual journalists and news outlets creates a chilling effect and fosters an environment where further harassment and even physical attacks are seen to be acceptable.”
“I was outraged by it, and I found it kind of scary,” said Powers, the CNN political analyst. “I used to be on Fox where I said things that made the audience mad all the time. It wasn’t until Trump that I started having legitimate fears.”
Others, though, pointed out that the GIF might have been a form of Internet trolling, a childish attempt to provoke a disproportionate reaction from the media.
It wasn’t “exactly a presidential tweet, but also not quite the threat to the free press too many made it out to be,” argued Weinstein, the conservative journalist. “Sometimes it’s okay to not take his tweets literally or seriously.”
Earlier this month, after Trump ended his covid-19 hospital stint, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) tweeted a version of the same GIF with the CNN logo replaced by an image of the coronavirus.
THE POLICYMAKER
Aaron Belkin was visiting his parents in Cleveland when a phone call woke him up. An overseas journalist wanted comment about a tweet he hadn’t seen yet. For Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a think tank in San Francisco that promotes the study of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the military, that tweet aimed to destroy his life’s work.
“I was just kind of very sad and upset but had to put the emotions aside to deal with the crisis,” Belkin said. “If you can ban LGBT people from the military, that will have ripple effects across the rest of government and society. And it sets a precedent for discrimination in other realms like health-care insurance and various civil rights.”
The tweets shocked many people, especially since Trump had called himself a “real friend” to the community while on the campaign trail. But it also led to logistical questions: Were these tweets an official statement of policy?
“It was unclear what it was. It contradicted some of what the military was doing, and it sowed a lot of confusion,” Zelizer said. But “by putting something out there, it’s then a discussion. And you’re forcing the military to respond and to deal with this themselves, and you don’t have to be the person doing it.”
The tweets were later used against the president in a protracted legal battle as he attempted to implement his proposed ban, one of several times his online statements undercut his policy proposals in court.
THE THREAT
Trump doesn’t use his Twitter account just to announce unformed policy. He also uses it for international diplomacy with all the finesse of a shock jock, as seen two days into 2018, when he tweeted this implicit threat.
This was “a remarkable moment. It took a conversation that normally would have existed through diplomatic channels, through the State Department, through ambassadors, through people who were trying to ratchet down tensions between two nations, and instead blew it up,” said Princeton history professor Kevin M. Kruse. The closest situation in U.S. history he could recall was at the height of the Cold War when a hot mic caught Reagan during a sound check saying: “I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
“But that was unintentional,” Kruse said. “That was a joke. He was clearly not serious.”
Others, though, argue that forgoing the usual diplomatic channels might be an effective tactic, particularly when dealing with authoritarian regimes. Fleischer cited an argument often made on the right that the public threat frightened Kim into diplomatic conversations. “The irony of that tweet that made people run for the hills thinking war was imminent may have very well created a much more calm atmosphere.”
THE CATCHPHRASE
Trump has always showed a fondness for the phrase, which he’s tweeted more than 370 times since first uttering it back in 2011 referencing the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain, a businessman then seeking the Republican presidential nomination. But he really began using it in earnest during the Mueller investigation, and February 2018 was its first solo appearance. Soon enough, he’d sent it out more than “make America great again,” which he’s tweeted a mere 175 times.
One of Trump’s strengths as a politician is his knack for coining phrases that are adored by his base and become pebbles in the shoes of his critics. Twitter is a place to try out new riffs, insulting nicknames and catchphrases, often without context — perhaps the only platform where that’s possible, since shouting them out randomly at a news conference before walking offstage wouldn’t make much sense. He’ll then work them into his speeches and grin as his base chants them, “just like a stand-up, to see what lands and what doesn’t,” said Weinstein.
On the other hand, some of the phrases he’s created during his presidency seem less intentional. Case in point: “a very stable genius.” That came at the end of three tweets in January 2018 in which he praised his own “mental stability and intelligence.”
It quickly became a meme, mostly used to mock Trump, such as by superimposing those words over an image of a donkey in — you guessed it — a stable. It also became the title of a book about his presidency by Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
“Who actually calls himself a genius?” said Schnure. “Then you add the word ‘stable’ in front of it, and now you’re [unintentionally] next-level funny. Because that’s just not an adjective you put before ‘genius.’ Are you a Mensa genius? An evil genius? Maybe. But he picked a word that in an emergency room is used to say someone is going to be okay.”
Trump has embraced the phrase, saying and tweeting it several times since, which has helped deflate its power as an insult.
“He knows it gets under people’s skin, so he’s going to repeat it, have fun with people,” Schnure said.
THE SURPRISE FIRING
Historians think President Abraham Lincoln fired Union Gen. Nathaniel Banks in a telegram. Truman canned Gen. Douglas MacArthur the same way.
Trump, however, became the first to dispatch with an employee via social media when he announced the ousting of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Twitter, three hours before calling and telling him. In the intervening time, Tillerson, who had cut ties with ExxonMobil after 41 years to assume the role, merely told reporters in a statement that he “did not speak to the president, and is unaware of the reason” for his firing, but he was “grateful for the opportunity to serve.”
“Even within his own administration and within the Republican Party, he likes to use this to keep people on their toes and to make them feel uncertain about what comes next,” said Zelizer.
While it may have been an effective display of Trump’s power, Tim Fullerton, a former Obama administration official, suggested that the firing had unseen ripple effects on morale. “I would have felt demoralized that the president thought so little of my department and the leadership there that firing off a tweet announcing the firing of somebody was appropriate,” he said.
THE FEARMONGERING INSULT
Sometimes, Fleischer said, Trump “hits himself in his own nose. … He’s misused Twitter in sometimes very mean ways that hurt him more than his intended target.”
Though he didn’t specifically name anyone in this tweet, it was clear he was referring to “the squad,” four progressive congresswomen of color, three of whom were born in the United States.
Zelizer said Trump’s antagonism toward the squad seemed like an attempt to paint the Democratic Party as radical, a tactic he’s continued in his campaign against Joe Biden. But the backlash to this particular language was swift and fierce, even within his own party.
“This President has always loved to prey on people’s fears,” one of the squad members, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), recalled via email, later adding: “People like me have always been the targets of his most xenophobic, racist attacks. But we aren’t going anywhere.”
One of Trump’s most divisive traits on Twitter is his willingness to hurl insults — often offensive, sometimes racist and misogynistic — at political opponents, dating back to his belligerence against Hillary Clinton and his Republican primary opponents.
“The attacks I get now, in the Trump era, are very different than the attacks I got in the pre-Trump era,” said Powers. “It’s a consistent stream of misogyny. … It seems to be a real tactic.”
“He was really working to tap into some of the stereotypes and ideas that people already have about women of color, seeing them as angry, loud, disruptive, un-American, and undeserving of this country’s resources and attention,” said Sherri Williams, a professor of race, media and communication at American University. More broadly through these tweets, and those criticizing other prominent politicians of color such as the late congressmen John Lewis and Elijah E. Cummings, Williams said, Trump is attempting to stoke “the fears that some White people have while we see the country become more Brown and Black every day.”
THE RACIST RETWEET
The golf cart in the video bears two signs: a blue one reading “Trump 2020” and a red one reading “America First.” Several more carts follow. At a glance, it looks like an innocuous parade of Trump supporters. Six seconds in, though, the first driver holds up his fist and through a mustachioed mouth yells: “White power! White power!”
That is no longer shocking in 2020 America. What is shocking is that the president retweeted it. He soon removed the tweet, and “a White House spokesman said Trump had not heard the racist language when he sent” it, as The Post reported.
Trump later said in an interview that “it’s the retweets” that get him “in trouble.”
Many have suggested that the president uses retweets strategically, as a way of sharing content while distancing himself from it — in this case, to endorse white nationalism while retaining plausible deniability.
But most of the experts The Post consulted think his tweets typically aren’t an attempt at 4-D chess. Former Obama speechwriter David Litt, recalling his time working in the administration, said that “political journalists tend to overestimate how strategic everyone is being anyway, even pre-Trump.” Administrations spend as much, if not more, of their time responding to events rather than planning them. “No one is playing chess. Everyone is playing Whack-a-Mole.”
THE OCTOBER SURPRISE
It arrived while many were asleep, nearly 10 months into the pandemic: the tweet that would send the country into a panic as it woke up. It racked up more than 1 million retweets, the most of any during Trump’s presidency. It also logged more than 1.8 million “likes,” another personal record, though it’s hard to know how many were sending best wishes or literally liking that the diagnosis had occurred.
Some replies wished Trump a speedy recovery. Many offered 280-character prayers. One man drew a glowing portrait. Others criticized his administration’s response to the pandemic — or expressed utter fury, tweeting things one can’t imagine being said to the president of the United States.
As reporters struggled to trace his health status and the disease’s spread through the White House, the tweet offered one vital piece of data: a timestamp, the irrefutable constant.
Trump was cleared to leave Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Oct. 5. He sent the news in a tweet.
