WASHINGTON (AP) – Former President Donald Trump insists he enjoys his life with Twitter. The press reports that his aides are shooting more and more often and are more “elegant,” he says. Also, there is no risk of reaction to retweet nasty accounts.
But since Trump was banned from major social media channels after helping incite the Jan. 6 deadly uprising at the U.S. Capitol, his power is being tested to shape national conversation.
Trump went from a reality TV star to a politician and president, bending the media and media tools at will. He still connects with his followers through his posts and appearances on Fox News and other conservative outlets, where he repeats misinformation about the 2020 election. And he remains a powerful force in the Republican Party, with a starring role Saturday in a act of the Republican National Committee to be held at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Still, the influence on American life he once enjoyed seems to be eroding, at least for now.
“It will never be the same for Trump if he doesn’t run again,” said Harold Holzer, a historian who is director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Institute for Public Policy and wrote a book about presidents and the press. “I do not think it is unnatural to reduce coverage. I’m sure it’s hard for his ego, given the amount of oxygen he sucks and the amount of ink he generates, but it’s not at all natural for a former president to get less attention. “
Still, it’s been a dramatic adjustment. Trump’s tweets used to drive the news cycle, with CNN, MSNBC and Fox News often spending dozens of hours a week combining showing their missives, according to an analysis of GDELT television news archives. Since he was banned from Twitter and other platforms, Trump can no longer speak directly to large audiences and now has to rely on his followers and conservative and conventional media to amplify his messages.
To make up for the continued shutdown, Trump’s aides have been sending statements and supports that often sound like the tweets he used to dictate. “Happy Easter to EVERYONE, including the CRAZIES of the radical left who prepared our presidential election and want to destroy our country!” read one sent from his political action committee (“Happy Easter!” was the most moderate version offered by his official government office).
At the same time, Trump has been stepping up his appearances in conservative media, even sitting with his daughter-in-law for his online program. But few of those comments have reverberated in the mainstream media, long criticized for allowing Trump to dictate coverage, he is increasingly wary of repeating his falsehoods, especially with regard to the 2020 election.
While Trump still has coverage, Google search results for his name are at their lowest point since 2015, as the Washington Post noted this week. And on TV at night, some have tried to scrub it completely, with “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert refusing to say his name.
After five years of wall-to-wall Trump, the contrast is discordant.
“He didn’t look like any previous president in the amount of oxygen he inhaled. But every time he looks like a lot of former presidents because of the little oxygen he gets now,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary for George W. Bush While this is the reality for any former president, Fleischer argued that Trump continues to “assault” the party and that he could return to the spotlight if he chooses to run again.
And while its dominance of cable news has plummeted from its peak in the fall of 2016, when it was mentioned tens of thousands of times a month, according to GDELT data, however, it remains present on cable news channels.
“Two months out of office, he is still almost where he was in March last year, when the pandemic displaced him greatly,” said Kalev Leetaru, the project’s creator. “It shows that even two months out of the office, it still carries significant weight.”
While most of Trump’s statements have relatively little coverage, some, such as one denoted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as “a horrible, grumpy, unsmiling political pirate,” dominated the news coverage, with CNN in particular, which features him 44 minutes.
“President Trump is the biggest news generator in American history,” said Trump spokesman Jason Miller, who insisted, “There has never been this kind of media interest in post-race careers. Presidential Clinton, Bush or Obama. “
Others see it differently.
“I think he lost all momentum when he was taken off the platforms. Politics has a momentum and now it doesn’t, ”said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.
While Trump has tried to inject himself into news coverage, Brinkley said his comments are largely treated as complements to coverage focused on other issues. “Where I used to throw tweets like Zeus, they were like thunder from above, and now they’re little squeaks of the Sea-to-Lake mouse,” he said.
Still, Trump remains a dominant figure in the Republican party. His endorsement is highly coveted by the 2022 Republican primaries. And he continues to flirt publicly with running for president again in 2024.
And Holzer believes Trump could reappear if he is allowed to rejoin Twitter or if he continues with exaggerated plans to launch his own social media, as the aides he is still considering have said.
Republican Party strategist Alex Conant argued that Trump’s power “is waning every day,” as other Republicans are scheduled to run in 2024, and said Trump could take a more strategic approach if he wants to remain part of it. of the daily conversation.
“When you are president of the United States, it is very easy to fit into all the news cycles. But once you’ve left office, it has to be more strategic, ”Conant said, arguing that Trump could have announced a book, sat in state-run interviews, or delivered a series of big speeches about the party’s future.
Fleischer, too, argued that Trump could have more influence by following in the footsteps of Presidents Bush and Obama, whose statements are striking because they are rare.
“The risk for a former president is that you start to be seen as former senators or former congressmen or collaborators who are on television on a somewhat regular basis. A former president should be in an elevated position,” he said. “But Donald Trump has always done things differently with some success.”