Trump has been totally silent for weeks now. He must be seething with anger, and desperate to start screaming in all-caps.
But he has only been banned from two sources, twitter and Facebook,
The rest of the internet is still accessible for him.So I’m wondering why he doesn’t use it.
There are still plenty of options for him to publish his rantings.
Obviously, twitter and facebook are the easiest way to blast a message.
But remember back in the early days of the internet (1996 or so )when people had ‘home pages’ on Yahoo? (often with green letters on a garish pink background )
Trump could do something similar, and still reach millions of people, even though they would have to take the time to bookmark and click on his page to read his latest rant.
And of course, the media would read them all, and give him plenty of publicity
Why is he staying so quiet? Am I not seeing something?.
A lot of people these days won’t bother with blogs. That’s why most folks these day’s don’t have a homepage. Heck, I don’t think I’ve updated MY homepage for over 10 years now, although I still have it. Much of Trump’s base is old and not tech savvy or very computer literate, heck, a bunch of 'em probably still don’t have smartphones and rely on Fox News and even more niche broadcasters.
So sure, there’s still the “rest of the internet” but the interfaces to use it require more effort on the part of the user and a lot of Trump’s base either don’t bother with it or wouldn’t know how to access it.
That would be orange letters on a brown-shi( r)t background in his case, I reckon?
I have been wondering the same, and @Broomstick reply (bolding mine):
is so stupid (the problem it hints at, not Broomstick!) that it probably is true. Just like I don’t get it when people claim not to be able to use Google Maps without the app, when you can easily open the Google Maps website on any browser.
I for one try to use apps as little as possible and try to use the original website whenever possible, some people think it is weird.
Having a blog usually requires you to think in more than two sentences at a time. So there’s that.
But also…never mind whether his followers could access it (I’m sure someone with experience could knock up a “Trumpreader” app in an afternoon, for people who don’t understand that websites are a thing) , there’s a certain amount of social cachet lacking from having a blog. It’s the sort of thing people with Internet skills and knowledge do off their own bat - y’know, tradespeople.
Real, important movers and shakers like Trump (yeah, I know, I know) don’t do skilled work - they Have People for that! Using Twitter makes him a customer of a service that other rich and famous people are also customers of - well, that’s okay, being a customer is respectable. Having your own blog is like being seen out in your driveway fixing your own car. And just another reminder that you were kicked out of the club where the cool kids hang out
I have a couple apps I use, but like you, I have a preference for actual websites. Also, it’s a lot easier to read the big screen on my PC than on my phone. I’m also considered weird for researching apps before I install them, then going through settings and dialing down how much data they track on me and so forth. Not that I’m particularly worried about others knowing where I am/have been (for the past year that’s largely been “at home” and “at work” and nowhere else) but a lot of apps are power suckers. Those same folks with a ton of apps on their phone are carrying spare power packs and having their phone die daily but I only NEED to charge every third day.
OK, OK, off on a tangent.
So far we have a few reasons Trump doesn’t blog, and there’s no reason they can’t all be relevant. Any other ideas?
Perhaps he is waiting for someone to offer to pay him gazillions for publishing his rants on a column that would be updated every five minutes? It would have to be embedded in another website and on every other page of that website there would have to be big, beautiful and prominent links to HIS truths.
Perhaps he is negotiating something like this but the offers are not lucrative, devout or flattering enough for his ego.
Another possibility: Be glad he is too dumb to have thought of that, don’t give him ideas!
My suspicion goes a bit further. He’s not technologically literate enough to do it himself, as you guys say. But his handlers (for lack of a better term) who are smart enough to know about it also know he says bad stuff that causes problems, and thus don’t voluntarily take it on. What Trump says often actually creates problems–hence why Trump’s technology guy said he rued the day Trump figured out Twitter.
Second, simply by being a blog, it would be much less popular than he was on Twitter. Heck, the same can even be said about Parler. He would have a lot fewer followers. There are also more technical people who hate Trump, so more haters on the blog, at least. And since most Trump followers wouldn’t have their own blogs, he’d likely have to have open comments (possibly with moderation).
Finally, there’s also the whole cachet in the “conservatives are being silenced by social media” argument. If he makes a blog, that kinda cuts into that. And, even if he’s not smart enough to think of that, his “handlers” may be.
I’m a bit surprised too. I’d expect a big consideration was whether you could easily monetise traffic to the site, and a blog would seem well-suited to shill for donations, sell MAGA-merch, book a birthday call for $250.00 and other graceful and dignified ex-presidential enterprises.
More likely he feels the IT space is owned by his enemies - witness just how quickly Zuckerberg and that Twitter guy cut him down - and doing anything there is a risk. At some point he’ll have to engage regardless, otherwise his preferred methods of big rallies will be hard to organise and fill. His less deranged side-kicks are probably enjoying the relative quiet and seeing if he can be persuaded to be a bit less scatter-gun when he does emerge from his bunker.
He’s too lazy to learn one of the thousand other free platforms. He doesn’t care about his followers as they are all losers like him. The reality of his legal jeopardy has probably set in, so publishing is a fraught activity.
He’s never had anything to say except “look at me, big things are coming”. He can’t sell this anymore and he knows it.
This. While certainly an app could be created to deliver blatherings to the masses, I don’t see either Google or Apple touching that with a 10-foot pole. And if you can’t put your app in either of those app stores, that makes it a lot harder to distribute.
Trump’s too lazy and doesn’t have the attention span for a blog. Twitter was the perfect outlet for him, and thankfully it’s no longer available for him.
IMO the real power of TwitFace is the re-broadcasting. If DJT had eg 100K followers and they each had 10 who had 10, 100K turns into 10M. Net of duplicates. Obviously DJT’s numbers are were (!) bigger but you get the idea.
A blog-like thing, even one limited to 150 character rants, would lack that amplifier.
As we see w Fox “news”, talking about what’s being talked about is more powerful than talking. Which in turn is more powerful, and much easier, than doing.
He’s simply aware that all of the legal protections he had as president have been stripped away. He’s finally tumbled to the fact that anything he says, writes, posts, tweets, can and will be used against him in a court of law.
Twitter was the perfect medium for someone like Trump. It didn’t require a lot of thought, and for years, twitter didn’t care whether what he said was factually untrue or socially corrosive – he could blurt out thoughts and his followers would hoot and holler, and the media would make it a story. Low investment, high yield.
I suspect he will go back to randomly calling in on news segments and blasting out outrageous falsehoods and interrupting people. The problem is, a reporter can walk out on him or go to a station break and there’s more autonomy for reporters to do that now. He’s not the president; he’s just a guest now. Reporters can use him for entertainment value but they don’t need him for access to the WH. Big difference.
I’m with the “don’t give him any ideas” crowd. The silence has been a blessing! (And yes, alternatives like a blog require far more intellectual heft and focus than the “covfefe” guy would ever be capable of. He can’t even string a coherent sentence together.)
I wish your were right. But I think Trump honestly believes that he can sell anything. After all, he did win the election, you know. It was Georgia’s fault for not finding 11,000 more votes, and Rudi’s fault for not winning the 50 court cases, etc,etc,etc
I don’t think he is aware of anything, actually.
And in any case, I don’t think his tweets are actually illegal. Tweets screaming about “Fake News” , “the election is rigged” , “Hillary’s emails”, etc, are crazy–but what law is broken? (He tweeted a lot of craziness before he had the protection of immunity as the sitting President, so why not continue now?)
This is true…but if Trump just used a standard web site or blog, he could get a pretty good multiplier effect through Fox news, too. Whatever he types will get a bold headline on foxnews dot com , which is easy for millions of fanatics to copy and link on their Facebook pages , which they send to 10 more family and friends.
This is certainly true. But he doesn’t need to run a real blog. Just a simple web site where he would type one or two sentences on a screen. No organized menus, no graphics, no comments section. Basically the same way he used Twitter
Sources from inside his circle right now are telling reporters that Trump is terrified of the prospect of criminal prosecution for incitement of violence and election interference. Two things that could have been avoided if he had just STFU. It’s ridiculous to think he has now STFU simply because he doesn’t have access to Twitter or Facebook. Surprising as it might seem, he is now heeding sound legal advise.
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