The Rise of the Influencer Presidency
Nowadays if a politician is not on social media it’s an instant red flag. They should be posting about their policies and views on a near constant basis, and letting the world know exactly how they feel about any major global and/or domestic event at the drop of a hat - especially if they occupy one of the world’s great positions of political influence. The thing is, being able to let the world in on every thought you have is not necessarily a good thing. Case in point: Trump and twitter.
Donald J. Trump entered the twitter-verse on May 4th, 2009, following in the footsteps of many of his celebrity peers. At first, his tweets had little to do with politics. Instead, they were mainly focused on his opinions on popular culture and his life in the public eye.
This gradually began to change during Obama’s second term in office, as social media was starting to become an increasingly legitimate outlet for political discussions. During this period, Trump openly criticised the Democratic president’s policies, and even began to flirt with the notion of running for office himself. In other words, one can track his entire journey of celebrity-turned-politician via his twitter feed. And it didn’t end there.
One of Trump’s first tweets when he came into office stated “My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!.” If what Trump meant by being a modern president was tweeting an average of 18 times a day whilst holding the highest office in the land, then he definitely met that standard.
The inherent problem with the previous statement becomes obvious the minute you apply any level of critical thinking to it. To tweet close to 20 thoughts per day, even if maybe half of them were related to policy (which is being generous), the other half would comprise Trump’s thoughts and feelings on random topics, much like he had done before taking the White House.
While it may not be a big deal for you or me to hop on twitter.com (or what was formerly known as twitter) and give our unvarnished opinions on the latest trending topics, for a world leader to approach social media in the same way entirely dilutes the status of the office and makes the presidency seem like a farce as opposed to a serious, mentally-taxing job. Rather than respecting the POTUS while he was in office, people were continuously ‘meme-ing’ him into oblivion, and he didn’t seem to care at all. In fact, he appears to enjoy the attention and instant validation he gets from using social media.
Following his seemingly permanent ban from twitter in 2021 for inciting a riot and violating “the company’s policy against glorification of violence”, Trump was reinstated when it was bought by Elon Musk in 2022. Since then, Trump has continued his usual antics, with some of his more recent tweets containing AI generated images of his political opponent, Kamala Harris, in front of a communist flag - no doubt to galvanize his loyal supporters while evoking rage amongst the general public. Perhaps without even attempting to, Trump is continually making headlines and staying on people’s lips ahead of the general election in November.
Speaking of Trump’s opponent, her social media use should not be discounted either. Even if it is entirely different to Trump’s. Harris embraced the internet trend of brat summer, based on the popular album that came out a couple of months before she accepted the Democratic nomination. It all started when the British pop singer, and brain behind brat, Charli XCX tweeted that “kamala IS brat” as a method of endorsing the Democratic candidate. From there, it began to snowball. Kamala HQ rebranded their twitter banner to lime green, the same colour as the brat album cover, cementing Harris’s campaign in popular culture.
As if that wasn’t enough, when Biden announced he was stepping down the internet collectively showed its support for his replacement by ‘meme-ing’ a clip of VP Harris quoting her mother asking if she believed she “just fell out of a coconut tree”. The anecdote itself was meant to highlight the importance of context, but due to the incredibly funny imagery of a coconut tree, as well as Harris’ signature laugh afterwards, it quickly gained virality as a Tik Tok sound bite. In other words, Harris has used social media to become a figure that young people feel they can engage with on a more human level and relate to in certain ways, at least more than Trump.
Above all, what these two diverging uses of social media highlight is that the presidency is no longer an office that is out of reach or beyond our comprehension. The person behind the title of POTUS has seemingly lost the prestige they once had, in favour of becoming a pseudo-influencer who either overshares cough Trump cough or tries to be your cool, hip aunt cough Kamala cough. Whether this change is doing more harm than good is yet to be seen.
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