How Much Will Twitter Matter to Donald Trump This Time?

• Donald Trump loved Twitter during his first term. Now he’s aligned with Twitter owner Elon Musk.
• Does that mean Twitter will be important in a second Trump administration?
• Probably! But remember that Trump used Twitter as an output device, not an input device. That could limit its influence on him.

Donald Trump is going to be president again. Elon Musk, one of his biggest backers, owns Twitter.

Does this mean Twitter is going to be more important in the Trump 2.0 era?

Probably?

But we won’t know how Twitter, which Musk has renamed X, will matter for some time.

It was interesting, for instance, to see the campaign for the next Senate majority leader play out on Twitter over the weekend, with conservative leaders, including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, weighing in on the platform, as well as Musk and Trump.

That fight is still ongoing, by the way. Here was Kirk on Monday morning, trying to rally the troops in favor of US Sen. Rick Scott:

And at a minimum, it seems obvious to conclude that as long as Musk is aligned with Trump, Twitter users will see a lot of content on Twitter that supports Trump. As both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have reported — and plenty of people can see with their own eyes — Twitter already has taken a rightward turn under Musk’s ownership. And, obviously, lots of people in Trump’s orbit are also enthusiastic Twitter users, starting with Musk himself.

But the big unknown I’m thinking about right now is a pretty simple one: Does Donald Trump know, or care, about what’s happening on Twitter?

Trump famously loved Twitter during his first term in office. But he wasn’t addicted to it the way many of us are — constantly scrolling for things to enrage or delight or distract. Instead, he was using it like a remote control — to program the media’s coverage, and reality itself.

Here’s Trump in 2019, talking to Fox News about the way he used Twitter:

I have destroyed bills that were going to be voted on that were bad, and I’ve gotten bills passed that were good by using Twitter. And Twitter is really a typewriter for me. It’s really not Twitter — it’s — Twitter goes on television, or if they have breaking news, I’ll tweet, I’ll say “Watch this — boom.”

I did the Golan Heights to Israel, and I put it out on Twitter. If I put out a news release nobody’s even going to see it. Today’s Huawei, I put it out on Twitter, people see. That’s not to build Twitter. That’s to say that as soon as it goes out, it goes on television, it goes on Facebook, it goes all over the place and it’s instant — it really is, to me, it’s a modern way to communicate.

But note who Trump was talking to in that interview: Fox News.

Trump 1.0 was a president who understood that digital media was important. But he was first and foremost a president who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, and his media diet reflected that: print newspapers and magazines, which he would scrawl notes on using a Sharpie. And, above all else: TV.

Trump was the TV president

Trump was transfixed by TV, and that meant TV was the most important medium during his first presidency. If you wanted to communicate with the president, the conventional wisdom became, you did it by going on TV because you knew he’d see it there. Fox News in particular.

That was four years ago, and since then, the TV landscape has continued to bleed money and audience. Election night ratings last week were down 25% from 2020. Newish mediums and platforms like podcasts, YouTube and TikTok are ascendant, and Trump and his campaign spent a lot of time and effort over there.

So is it possible that Trump, who is approaching 80 and played songs from 1978 at his rallies, has changed his media diet, too?

I mean, sure? I guess it’s conceivable that he went on Theo Von’s podcast/YouTube show because he’s a big Theo Von fan.

My hunch, though, is that he’s getting his information the way he always has — by watching and reading Old Media. And, as The New York Times reports, by asking whoever’s in his orbit at the moment:

“Mr. Trump, who is a mix of competing impulses, is also doing what he always does: calling around to friends and associates, asking them who they think he should pick.”

And to be clear, what’s happening on Twitter — or anywhere else online — can very much influence how the people who influence Trump think. But even they pay attention to TV — or, at least TV clips on the internet.

Musk, for instance, spent part of his Sunday using Twitter to criticize “Saturday Night Live” — just like Trump used to do. “They are so mad that @realDonaldTrump won,” he wrote, adding:

I’m very wary of looking at Trump 2016-2020 and confidently projecting that the next four years will be the same. But I will be surprised if Donald Trump, TV guy, becomes Donald Trump, Twitter guy.