Anyone who is going to have an online presence should know that filtering yourself is the first rule of posting and tweeting. Because once it’s online, it lives forever.
Our president is apparently unaware of this or cares not.
Donald Trump has recently—and other times as well—come under fire for his careless way of tweeting his viewpoints and ranting from both his personal and presidential Twitter accounts.
Never has there been a president who would use Twitter as a public forum so freely. Using his personal account far more than @POTUS, he still manages to interact with 32-million people, and last month, White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed that the president’s tweets are indeed official White House statements.
Recently Trump retweeted a GIF (which unsurprisingly originated from Reddit’s largest white nationalist “alt right” forum) of himself in a WWE wrestling match. In the GIF the president is seen tackling and then punching someone who’s face has been digitally edited and covered by a CNN logo.
Now I’m all about GIF’s and their ability to accurately portray of emotion, but when you are telling your followers that violence against journalists is the answer, you’re going to need to reevaluate your life decisions.
He means to discredit CNN as “Fake News,” but the reality is that like professional wrestling, his administration is a big joke. He thinks he’s getting his point across but, as any wrestling fan knows, wrestling match outcomes are predetermined. So in this case, we all know how this will turn out…he’s gonna get taken down.
Just when you think this mediocre excuse for a president can’t go any lower, he grabs the media—which by the way gave him billions of dollars worth of free publicity during the election—and takes them down (literally in this GIF). I say don’t bite the hand that feeds you, but in typical tyrant behaviour, this bully doesn’t play nice in the ring.
If the White House is considering the president’s tweets to be official, how can this GIF be taken serious without an official letterhead? Regardless of whether someone is a civilian or the president, you must be diplomatic about your approach. As the leader of the nation, you shouldn’t be wasting time in Twitter feuds like teenagers do.
Trump’s biggest opportunity for improvement is scaling back the behavior that garnered him TV ratings and made him a celebrity. That attention was good for networks, but continuing with this type of unfiltered communication through Twitter account means eventually being held accountable for your actions. In order to maintain public trust in the government, elected officials must answer why they do and say these things, even if it’s within 140-characters tweets.
In his latest stunt, he made it clear he’s wrestling with the media, and only one winner will prevail. We’re now in the ring with the Trump administration and it is time for us to show him that even though wrestling may be fake, the bruises and injuries inflicted when in the ring are as real as former president Clinton’s impeachment. Trump had better beware and know that the internet will be watching and documenting any sudden proclamations to use against him, and who knows maybe he’ll eventually be impeached like Clinton.