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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.
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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?"
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?"
It's been my theory all along that Trump is trolling the Republican party. I am also not much surprised that this has been an effective method for gaining support from some of their followers.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
If only Twitter could appoint a committee with Anita Sarkeesian in charge to ban all those nasty conservatives who abuse their "free speech" to say things good liberals find offensive.
Oh wait, they already have.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Friend, I am only a few years younger than you, and believe you me, I have a sense of humor (although it's sometimes rather sick and twisted), but please, reassure me you're kidding about this!
Donald Trump needs to go. He'll destroy this country and maybe start World War 3. Not qualified in any way shape or form to be POTUS. Not that any candidate from any party is either, but he's literally the worst of the worst.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Actually, I think this comparison is better than "Trump = Hitler": http://qz.com/624065/a-tip-to-americans-from-an-italian-who-saw-berlusconi-get-elected-again-and-again-and-again/
Trump seems like the American version of Italy's Berlusconi - a buffoon who nobody took seriously, who won the election, and who ruined his country.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Or is this story about people dumb enough to read and react to what this guy says?
Curiously, a lot of hay has been made about Trump's support from uneducated voters, largely from this poll, page 36, which puts percent of supporters with "college degree" at 46%.
The press, of course, is quick to point out that 46% is less than half, so they proclaim far and wide that his supporters are "mostly uneducated".
What the press doesn't note, however, is that 70 % of Americans don't have a degree.
Trumps supporters are more educated than the population average.
Feel free to call us dumb, it helps us change our vote to $your candidate!
(Oh, hey! Want to go out behind the trailer and shoot at beer cans with my .22?)
Yes, he has a remarkable knack for picking up angry soundbites in the crowd and amplifying them back at the audience. Some people see this as a clever politics, his followers don't see it at. But I dare say the vast majority of the english speaking world see it as embarrassingly obvious.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.