How Donald Trump Uses Twitter As a Weapon of Fear

HughPickens.com writes: Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman write in the NYT that with his enormous online platform of six million followers, Donald Trump has used Twitter to badger and humiliate those who have dared cross him during the presidential race, latching on to their vulnerabilities, mocking their physical characteristics, personality quirks and, sometimes, their professional setbacks. Trump has made statements that have later been exposed as false or deceptive — only after they have ricocheted across the Internet. For example, Cheri Jacobus, a Republican political strategist, did not think she had done anything out of the ordinary: On a cable television show, she criticized Donald J. Trump for skipping a debate in Iowa in late January and described him as a "bad debater." Trump took to Twitter, repeatedly branding Jacobus as a disappointed job seeker who had begged to work for his campaign and had been rejected. "We said no and she went hostile," Trump wrote. "A real dummy!" Trump's campaign manager told the same story on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." For days, Trump's followers replied to his posts with demeaning, often sexually charged insults aimed at Jacobus, including several with altered, vulgar photographs of her face. (continued) This week, Trump sent out a menacing message on Twitter about the Ricketts family, a wealthy clan of Republican political donors, after it was reported that Marlene Ricketts donated $3 million to a group opposed to Trump's candidacy. "They better be careful," Trump wrote of the family, "they have a lot to hide!" "It's a little surreal when Donald Trump threatens your mom," Marlene Ricketts's son, Tom, later told reporters.

It is not just that Trump has a skill for zeroing in on an individual's soft spot and hammering at it. It is that he sets a tone of aggression against the person, and his supporters echo and amplify it. Jacobus sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trump and his top aide, citing electronic messages that showed the Trump campaign had courted her and not the other way around. "I have been trashed and ruined on Twitter," Jacobus says adding that Trump's lawyers had responded to her letter, but that they had not yet reached a resolution. "At what point does it cross the line into something that's defamatory and might be actionable?" says Parry Aftab, a lawyer who leads the Internet safety group WiredSafety. "At what point does it cross the line into encouraging violence against groups and individuals?"

Comments

Re:what a laugh

[CaptainLard]

I'd argue the guy who called a former US governor a pussy on national TV in a victory speech during his campaign for President of the United States of America is the one who could use an attitude adjustment.

Re:Trump = Terrorist

[__aaclcg7560]

"The Republican Establishment terrorized themselves resulting in Donald Trump becoming a party nominee"

That would imply that the Republican Establishment are capable of taking responsibility for the situation that they created by embracing the Tea Party.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/how-gop-elite-set-stage-for-donald-trump

Re:Trump = Terrorist

[NotDrWho]

This whole summary sounds like a precursor to Twitter banning Trump. Their "Trust and Safety Council" with Anita Sarkeesian needs to protect us from any voices which may harm or threaten all of us by disagreeing with the SJW agenda.

Re:Timing

[Jason Levine]

The difference is that politicians in the past would stretch, spin, and skew the truth, but tried to stop short of outright breaking it. It was like a game. Who could come closest to breaking the truth without actually doing it? If you lost and were caught in a lie, you would retract your statement, make a mea culpa, and then try to find a new way to spin the truth so as not to break it again.

Trump, on the other hand, doesn't shy away from lies and doesn't bother admitting he's wrong when caught making lies. According to Politifact, 20% of his statements are Pants on Fire lies. Another 39% are false. That's 59% of stuff coming out of Trump's mouth that are completely untrue. For comparison, Cruz has an 8% Pants on Fire rating and 31% false for a 39% total. Trump only scores 7% on True or Mostly-True statements. (Cruz is at 21%.)

No other candidate does so poorly on this rating, but Trump simply doesn't care about truth at all. If he says that John Pershing shot 49 Muslim rebels with bullets covered in pig's blood and it kept terrorism at bay for 25 years, he gets his message across. Who cares if the story is a complete fabrication? He got people to cheer him on and that's all that matters to Trump. He claims to be an outsider and not a politician but he's more of a politician than anyone else in the race.

Re:what a laugh

[iggymanz]

Joking, yes.

But Trump not "The worsts of the worst", Obama is even worse than him (which is quite an achievement).

e.g. "unemployment at less than five percent under Obama!"...no it's 23 percent, near Depression era levels, but conveniently the BoL changed the way that's counted in the late 80s

Re:what a laugh

[amicusNYCL]

Trump referred to Ted Cruz as a pussy. A couple things: one, Cruz is not a former governor, he's a former solicitor general and a current senator. And, two, Cruz sort of is a pussy.

Re:I thought leftists supported public shaming?

[AmiMoJo]

What you call "shaming" is just exercising freedom of speech to criticise behaviour. It's mostly the anti-feminists saying that they should not be criticised, but sorry, even if it upsets you out makes you feel ashamed, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. People will criticise you, deal with it.