POLITICS AS USUAL: Troller-in-Chief

November 30, 2016 · 0 Comments

By Alison Collins-Mrakas

As the world prepares for a Trump Presidency, there are fraught and fevered conversations in the punditocracy about what to call him.
Some, of course, unprintable but some we are pretty familiar with.
There are many new titles that President-elect (sorry, I still find that ridiculous to write) will inherit when he takes office in January. (As an aside, I am aware that there is a very small possibility that he may not take office given the two million plus more votes that Clinton has and the multiple recounts that may be underway. But that’s next week’s topic, so I will stick with the premise that he will be president).
Trump will be the President, Commander in Chief, POTUS, Leader of the Free World. These are all titles that every President assumes when he (or hopefully she, one day) walks into the Oval Office. But Trump, in his inimitable style, will bring one title that no one else has ever, and hopefully will never again, bring to the Office of the President – and that is, “Troller in Chief.”
For those that don’t know what a “troll” is, the handy dandy folks at Wikipedia describe a troll as someone who “…sows discord on the internet by starting arguments, upsetting people, by posting inflammatory comments with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.”
In other words, someone who posts nasty stuff online for the sole purpose of trying to cause problems for people. Or to just be a jerk. Sounds like a pretty good description, doesn’t it?
Trump is a Twitter Troll. On a massive scale. This has nothing to do with his campaign for the presidency. He’s always been a twitter Troll. Since he spat out his first tweet years ago, he has been waging a non-stop war of teeny tiny words against all manner of foes. Newspaper columnists, fellow billionaires, TV personalities and on and on it goes. And he ratcheted up the invective when he began his run for the White House. As he sought to be the “commander in chief” he fast became the “bully in chief.”
He is a pervasive, ugly presence in the twittersphere. Tweeting out snappy, snippy comments multiple times a day, at all hours – and most often in the wee hours of the morning.
A friend sent me an apt quote about twitter, “Twitter is where fools go to make their quota.”
How very true. It appeals to folks with limited vocabulary, limited attention span and limited patience.
Twitter is the perfect medium for Trump and his followers. A man with little or no impulse control with the vocabulary of a six year old and the school-yard taunts that go with it.
Leaving aside the fact that he is now the President-elect and thus would assume at least some measure of respectability, he is a grown man – a 70 year old man, actually. So, why is he spending his days sending out nasty tweets? Shouldn’t he be getting boned up on what the job of President entails? Because it was pretty evident during the campaign that he has no clue just what it is the President does. One would think that he’d be taking a crash course in civics so that he’d know at least the basics of the job when he walks into that Office on January 20th.
But no. He has spent the last two weeks sending out crazy tweets about the New York times, Clinton, Jill Stein, illegal voters, cabinet positions as if they’re game show prizes and on and on. This man is going to be the President of the United States and he is acting like a high school mean girl. It’s insanity.
He has reverted back to the nasty name calling that he employed throughout the campaign. Who can forget, “Crooked Hillary”, “Lyin’ Ted”, “little Marco”. Are we to expect the same kind of thing about world
leaders? Mopey Merkel? Dopey Justin? Frumpy Francois? It sounds ridiculous, but I fear, unfortunately, pretty accurate.
During the last two weeks of the campaign, it is alleged that Trump’s team took away his phone, to prevent him from tweeting out anything incendiary lest the public be reminded of how prone he could be to popping off. It worked. The public and pundits alike commented on how “in control” he now seemed to be; congratulating him as it were for reining in his baser impulses. Bravo.
I hope for the sake of both the legacy and future of the Office of the Presidency and all that that embodies, that of the myriad important tasks his new Chief of Staff takes on, Twitter policeman will be his paramount concern.
That, or just take the bloody thing away from him. Trump should have – and frankly does have – better things to do than engage in a tweet storm with Rosie O’Donnell. Sheesh.