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Trump Plans to Live-Tweet Dem Debates
Trump’s favorite bully pulpit is his iPhone and he’s ready to pound it for the first primary debates of his Democratic opponents. From the Wall Street Journal:
The president, who has spent years embracing social media for his political advantage, is tentatively planning to live-tweet the debates on June 26-27, according to people familiar with the planning.
Mr. Trump, even from a remove, always promised to be the most important figure at the debate. Regardless of the specific debate questions, many Democratic voters will be listening for how each candidate plans to take down Mr. Trump.
Interacting in real time on Twitter would make Mr. Trump’s presence more tangible by directly inserting himself into the political conversation unfolding on stage. His posts could provide instant responses as well as insights into which attacks he feels most acutely.
While it will certainly entertaining, do you think it will help or hurt Trump’s chances in 2020?
Pretty darn unique…pretty darn risky…pretty darn Trumpish.
As amusing as this might be, I’m generally a believer that his re-election prospects would improve if he got off Twitter. I’m sure people who were going to vote for him anyway will enjoy the burns. But they tend to turn off the undecided voters.
I don’t think think it will hurt him. The only people who really pay attention to tweets are media types. The rest of the public will hear or read the reports through the filters they have long-established about President Trump’s tweets (generally not putting much weight on any individual tweet) and the media’s reaction to the tweets. No one who doesn’t already dislike President Trump will hear anything that will cause them to dislike him.
Do they, though?
Can Ricochet stream the debate and also overlay Trumps tweets on the screen ?
Trump tweeting always feels dangerous, but that’s why it’s fun.
Despite some people’s wishes, his comments never seem to hurt him with the electorate (at least so far). So, a night of “Crazy Joe”, “Crazy Bernie”, “Pocahontas”, “Alfred E. Newman”, “stone-cold phony named Robert Francis O’Rourke”, etc., could be a good time. Start making up some rules for the drinking games.
Might in any event people react differently to tweets about competitors / opponents during an event like the debate versus tweets about substantive topics?
If all journalists abandoned Twitter, it would die within a few weeks. Journalists are Twitter’s user base.
Well I made a pretty broad statement and I can’t prove it. But my anecdotal experience tells me that a lot of those college educated suburban types who don’t like socialism but voted D in 2018 anyway are turned off by Trump’s childish bluster. I say that as someone who’s probably 80% likely to vote for him in 2020, but who isn’t blind to his shortcomings and character flaws.
Maybe. Criticizing possible opponents certainly seems more within bounds than some of the stuff he says. But is he going to criticize their appearance? That kind of stuff is – there’s only one word for it – childish.
I think if the Dems put up a non-socialist candidate this stuff could hurt Trump a bit. But can a non-socialist make it through the Democrat primaries?
I’m not sure there is enough popcorn or wine in the world to get me to watch his tweets during those debates – debates which will also test the available supply of wine and popcorn in the world.
Since @vancerichards brought up the socialists competing for the Democratic nomination, I thought, if the candidates in the debates go off trying to out-socialist each other, tweets by President Trump about how ridiculous the candidates’ proposals are might bring the nuttiness to voters’ attention and help show how dangerous today’s Democratic politicians are.
My concern is I’m not sure Trump could stay on topic and not veer (as @catorand hinted) off into criticism of the candidates’ hair or tie or some other triviality. Also, I still fear that Trump might actually agree with some of the socialist stuff, notwithstanding his so far generally conservative policy decisions.
Are there any non-socialists in the Democrat primaries?
And this makes 20% maybe not rational ?
Well, Hickenlooper (not a household name) said socialism is not the answer and got booed off the stage at a Democrat event in California. So there are a few, but are they viable? Probably not.
It’s risky, but then Trump is a risk-taker and a ferocious competitor, in case you hadn’t noticed. I think being able to rebut the lies that will be coming out of the Democrats mouths (after all, their lips will be moving) real-time could be a yuuuge win. But, he might very well lose the thread and say stupid stuff.
I knew the Trump presidency would be HEV (high entertainment value). This may be the first debate, either Democrat or Republican, I watch from beginning to end!
If We’re gonna do this, We should go all out.
Live stream President Trump tweeting from the Oval Office with some of His guests and have the tweets appear on the big screen on stage during the “debates.”
Yes!! Who do we know who can get this done??
Trump’s tweets are an integral part of why he was elected. Any presidential “advisor” who doesn’t understand that should be fired for incompetence.
These will not be debates. They have nothing upon which they disagree. These will be races. They will challenge each other on how fast they can spend other peoples money.
They (the Dems, but they’ll never do it) need to set up an empty podium, which has a display showing the President’s tweets coming in real time. Could have huge entertainment value. (How about running a chyron graphic across the bottom of the screen repeating Trump’s last tweet? This could bring in a lot of advertisers if this program could in doing so attract huge viewership from both sides of the aisle.)
Sort of makes me think of when Clint Eastwood addressed the empty chair at the Republican convention.
I’m all in for this
Dang! Something to look forward while the soft ball questions are handed to an unimpressive field of Dems. A truly Trumpian way to get me reading Twitter while I try & follow the ‘debates’ of the contenders I was not planning to watch.