The real fallout if Donald Trump is reinstated on Twitter

Multiple major media outlets are now reporting that Elon Musk has indeed bought Twitter, and while Musk himself appears to be the only source for this story, no one on the Twitter board of directors is refuting. So if this is indeed true, and if the sale isn’t blocked by government regulators, what does that mean?

Musk is impulsive, immature, and more amoral than immoral. So it’s tough to predict what he will or won’t do – and that’s part of the problem. But Trump supporters are absolutely convinced that Musk’s first move will be to reinstate Donald Trump’s Twitter account, and that this will somehow magically cause Trump to become President of the United States again. This is yet another instance of right wingers always delusionally trying to convince themselves they’re going to win no matter what, even when Point A has nothing to do with Point B.

But let’s say Musk wakes up in a certain mood one day and does reinstate Trump’s account. This would be unfortunate, for some obvious reasons. Trump routinely spreads disinformation, and he’ll certainly promote violence. It would also be just plain embarrassing for America in the eyes of the world.

That said, Trump’s ongoing Twitter ban may actually be helping him. His instinct is to run his mouth every day so he can feel relevant. But his handlers have kept him buttoned up most of the time since he was removed from office. When he sometimes does go out and speak, it just lets the generic public see he’s a cognitive goner who’s irrelevant to 2024. Except most people don’t see it, because the media doesn’t generally cover his rally speeches, because the condition that Trump is in these days runs counter to how the media wants us to perceive Trump.

In Trump’s absence from public life these past fifteen months, the media (on the left, right, and center) has crafted a fictional version of him in which he’s working on some secret evil genius plan down at Mar-a-Lago and he has us right where he wants us. This is obviously, laughably, not the case. But it’s a narrative that’s scary-sounding enough to drive ratings, so the media has been milking it for all it’s worth.

If he were to rejoin Twitter, his tweeting – which would be so cognitively vacant it would make his tweets of yesteryear sound sage in comparison – would quickly shatter the media’s current ratings-friendly narrative that he’s somehow viable for 2024. The general public would see that Trump is now some grotesque senile version of Grandpa Simpson, angrily yelling incoherent things at a squirrel, just as those of us who have actually tuned in for his rally speeches have seen.

In such case the media would just shift to some new ratings-driven hyperbolic doomsday narrative about how his every new tweet is going to instantly get us all killed, or something along those lines. But at least the media would have to let go of the fictional “Trump 2024” narrative, because mainstream Americans wouldn’t buy it anymore. It doesn’t matter if Trump’s base buys it; most of the American viewing public is outside of Trump’s base.

If Trump returned to Twitter, Joe Biden’s approval rating would go up 5-10 points just because average Americans would be forcibly reminded every day that Biden is so preferable to the foul-tweeting whack job traitor he replaced. And Trump’s midterm agenda, which is based solely on promoting Republican primary candidates who kiss his backside at the expense of other Republican primary candidates who might have a better chance of winning in the general election, would only be more damaging to the Republicans if Trump regained Twitter as a platform.

While there are no magic wands in politics in general, one could almost argue that Trump being reinstated on Twitter would be the closest thing anyone could conjure up to a magic wand – for the Democrats. Trump’s tweeting would finish off his own 2024 fantasy, and would leave the Republicans stuck with midterm candidates who have a worse chance of winning.

And because Trump’s tweeting would shatter the media’s “Trump 2024” narrative, it would force the media to chase 2024 ratings in more realistic fashion, by digging into the corruption and extremism scandals of the various 2024 Republican candidates who could actually be the nominee.

Again, I’m opposed to Trump being reinstated to Twitter, for numerous reasons. You don’t let a deranged villain out of prison and toss him the keys to a car just because you know he’s going to drive it into a tree. But if Trump does return to Twitter, it won’t somehow magically boost Trump’s 2024 prospects. Instead it’ll reveal he never had any 2024 prospects.

Notably, Donald Trump has already announced today that he has no interest in returning to Twitter even if he’s reinstated. Of course a consistent liar like Trump should never be taken at his word. But he’s still running his own failing social network as an excuse to move money around, and that if he became active on Twitter, that bubble would burst. That’s probably the reason that Trump’s handlers have given him for why he shouldn’t return to Twitter, even though their real reason is that they don’t want him out there letting everyone know that he’s way too far gone to be a part of the 2024 conversation.