What the heck is suddenly going on with Donald Trump’s Twitter account?
Donald Trump’s Twitter account has long represented rock bottom when it comes to honesty, accuracy, decorum, spelling, and grammar. Trump is the kind of guy who has an unhinged late night meltdown about a respected public figure, then has to delete it and try again because he misspelled the person’s name. But even by Trump’s usual standards, something particularly chaotic has been playing out on Trump’s Twitter account over the past twenty-four hours.
The unusual level of strangeness began last night when Donald Trump posted the gibberish tweet “is = if (Spell)! Not like Chris” in response to an unrelated tweet from Geraldo Rivera. This appeared to be some kind of internal communication, mistakenly tweeted to the public, by one of Trump’s handlers who has access to his Twitter account. Then came an equally bizarre tweet in which Trump declared that “Biden would be America’s Dream Candidate” before having to delete it and change it to “Biden would be China’s Dream Candidate.” But that was just the beginning.
Trump also tweeted a quote from a sycophant pollster last night, only to delete it and post it again. The only apparent change? Swapping out the word “and” for an ampersand sign. Earlier today, Trump posted a tweet about Iran, then deleted it a few minutes later, and posted the exact same tweet again. We all expect Trump to make mistakes like tweeting about the “Prince of Whales.” But these other mistakes suggest something else is going on behind the scenes.
There have long been questions about which of Donald Trump’s staffers have access to his Twitter account, and which of them might be responsible for certain kinds of tweets that clearly didn’t come from Trump himself. It’s interesting that Trump’s Twitter account is suddenly suffering all kinds of bonkers new failures, just as one of his most trusted staffers – Sarah Huckabee Sanders – is resigning. Read into it whatever you will.
