relationship between the president and the American people. As I have sought to argue, early presidents sought to directly communicate with the American people. Using social media, “a President can communicate his thoughts at any time, on any subject, without the vetting process traditionally used by, to one degree or another, other modern Presidents” (McKechnie 3), a vetting process that served to mediate the relationship between the president and the public in an effort to maximize potential support for the president. Social media allows the president to become a personal figure that people can view in a different, more immediate way than was the case prior to its development. The fact that social media allows the citizen to now seemingly directly contact the president instantly places the president in a different relationship with potential voters.
This became clear when Donald Trump took charge of the Oval Office in January of 2017. “What FDR was to radio and JFK to television, Trump is to Twitter” (Gabler Billmoyers.com) because Trump has changed the rules of presidential communication through his use of social media, especially his Twitter account. Trump, who is notoriously not literate when it comes to computing, has nonetheless been able to master Twitter because of its key features: it has a simple website, is easy to use, and is easy to operate. However, Twitter encourages the user to be spontaneous; people on Twitter write whatever comes to their mind, regardless of whether it is true or civil. Trump too uses Twitter spontaneously to engage his followers, to annoy his opponents, and to create a reaction to what has been written that places himself in the middle of the reaction. In this process, it is well documented that Trump pays little attention to facts but instead seeks to galvanize his supporters while simultaneously enraging his opponents. President Trump is thus the first president that uses a major communication tool for presidential communication to reinforce preexisting views, opinions and bias, rather than reaching out to build a bigger constituency of support. “Trump’s lexicon is simple and repetitious… and Trump’s Tweets are overwhelmingly “negative in connotation” (Ott 64). These tweets are often compliments either toward himself, directly aimed at his supporters or insults and vulgarity directed at his political opponents. As Trump is always trying to put himself at the center of attention, he does not use Twitter to directly address the entirety of the country; he acts not as if he is President of the United States but as if he is President of the Trump Supporters in the United States. His use of Twitter for personal ends and not presidential advancement are denigrating the importance of the presidency.