NEW YEAR. NEW DECADE. 💜#Hello2020 #RockinEve pic.twitter.com/Ir5kt2pj4D
— New Year’s Rockin’ Eve (@NYRE) January 1, 2020
It’s official today is the first day of 2020.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.
With 2020 comes election season. I know, feels like we’ve not left election season since 2015, but from today there are 307 days until we elected the next President of the United States.
So far for the first day of the New Year, the President has tweeted zero times. Yeah, I know that won’t last.
I don’t typically cover the President’s retweets, because that’s even too much for me to handle, however, in light of the fact that the President is slow playing today’s tweets, meaning he’ll start rapid firing tweets off about 5 minutes before noon eastern time, I scrolled through yesterday’s retweets and found this:
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) December 31, 2019
Now I know it seems like decades ago we started the President Trump era, but I find this tweet ironic. It might be just me, as the author of “Trump Tweets,” but I vividly recall being told that his tweets didn’t matter, that I was putting far too much stock into what President Trump tweets.
I give you three guess to where I heard that, and the first two don’t count.
For those that might not be aware, Dan Scavino is President Trump’s social media director, and here he is, telling us, from his personal account, that Trump’s Tweets do matter. And I agree.
I strongly agree, given that those tweets are recorded as Presidential Communication. Given that a lot of our grand-children, and in some case our own children will learn about the tweets in school, it’s important to have context, it’s important to understand the tweets.
That’s not hyperbole that is reality Impeached or not, he is impeached, but regardless, his tweets will be persevered for generations to ponder, historians like one of my favorite follows on Twitter, Kevin Kruse, will have to study these 140-280 characters boxes of words, and place them in historical context.
Aside from the historical aspect of the tweets, there is also the new normal, that has other elected officials using Twitter like they were tweens, hoping to fit in with the cool kids. There is also the new normal that foreign governments now have to monitor the Presidential feed in order to glean insight into our President’s thoughts.
There is also the cost, I know, what cost, Twitter the social media platform is free, it is, but. There is always a but, when it comes to government and our tax dollars.
We the tax payer pay people that work for our government officials that spend their day, monitoring and maintaining social media accounts, that does not just include Twitter, that includes Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Dan Scavino is not working for free. He is being paid to direct social media.
I’m often asked how I manage to read the drivel that comes from President Trump’s tweets, and it is drivel, most of it is useless words that have no direct impact on our daily lives, but, see I told you there is always a but in politics.
But aside from the mock worthiness of his tweets, because yeah, sometimes, mocking or being snarky, are the only choices a writer has to cover “Trump Tweets,” he is the President of the United States and his words aka Tweets, do matter.
This post will be updated within reason.
This is an Open Thread.
I wish you all a very happy, health, and save 2020. Remember you aren’t alone, we are as they say, “in this together.”
