Donald Trump does not have a magic wand when it comes to this
Elon Musk still does not own Twitter. But he’s acting like he owns the place, “firing” Twitter’s current corporate leaders. And since they’ve surrendered and walked off the job, it’s entirely possible that Musk will go ahead and reinstate Donald Trump (among other right wing criminals) on Twitter in the coming hours or days, with no one there to stop him. Here’s the thing: it won’t matter.
For one thing, Donald Trump was on Twitter throughout the entire 2020 election cycle, tweeting up a storm, and he still lost that election by seven million votes. So no, Trump getting back on Twitter will not somehow magically make him a more viable political candidate going forward. Even if Trump were still in the “legitimately a political candidate” stage of his life, being back on Twitter wouldn’t help him.
For that matter, Trump has now moved on to the criminal defendant stage of his life. As we’ve seen in some other high profile DOJ criminal cases, Trump’s tweets will be used against him, both in the indictment and at trial. So if Trump does get back on Twitter, and he begins posting tweets that are aimed at obstructing justice or count as a confession to crimes, those tweets will only increase the odds that the DOJ gets a conviction once Trump is on trial.
Trump will not help himself in any way by being back on Twitter, and if he gets carried away, he’ll harm himself and cement his own downfall. And while Trump does love trying to incite violence, he can’t just tweet a magic combination of words that causes his supporters to magically take over the government. Nothing works that way. Trump couldn’t even pull that off back when he was still President. For all the fear and loathing over January 6th, everyone forgets that Trump’s attempt at violently keeping himself in office was a complete failure. And now his supporters are more afraid to get violent, because Trump no longer controls federal law enforcement.
Nor will Trump being back on Twitter somehow magically help the Republicans in the midterms. Trump’s rallies haven’t helped Republican candidates one bit in the general election thus far. His tweets won’t either. Trump has had some fun meddling in Republican primaries over the years, but he never has had the ability to boost Republican candidates in general elections.
So no, there’s no reason to sit around and fret about the possibility of Donald Trump getting back on Twitter. Now more than ever, Trump is a powerless broken man who’s merely playing defense as the Feds close in on him. His future consists of indictments and prison bars. If he wants to humiliate himself with some more stupid tweets along the way, so be it. Our job is to put in the volunteer work and win the midterms. Nothing has changed in that regard, not even by a little bit.
