Report Claims Trump Will Use Personal Twitter Account Throughout Presidency

Tim Dionisopoulos | January 16, 2017
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A report claims that President-elect Donald Trump will continue to make waves in the news cycle with his personal Twitter account, apparently to keep his following of 20 million plus users highly engaged.

Kelly O'Donnell, a reporter with NBC, tweeted out that the @POTUS account used by Obama, will transition over to Trump, but he will continue to tweet from @RealDonaldTrump.
 


The POTUS account has 13.5 million followers. Trump has an influential and engaged Twitter following, and a report on MRCTV.org revealed how the president-elect has used this to great effect in order to circumvent the media.

Trump backed up this sentiment about using his social media following to work around the media in an interview with the Sunday Times this past weekend.

"I’d rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump, it’s working — and the tweeting, I thought I’d do less of it, but I’m covered so dishonestly by the press — so dishonestly — that I can put out Twitter — and it’s not 140, it’s now 280 — I can go bing bing bing ... and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out — this morning on television, Fox — ‘Donald Trump, we have breaking news.’”

Trump has over 40 million followers if you combine his primary three social media profiles of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. While it appears that Twitter is Trump's social media profile of choice, he also has 17.5 million Facebook fans and 4.7 million Instagram followers. This gives him over 42 million fans/followers across three of the most popular social media networks.



While some may claim Trump is shirking tradition, President Obama also maintained private Twitter and Facebook profiles throughout his presidency, so there is a precedent for Trump's social media plans.

Obama was the first social media president, and it's important to remember that the passing over of the presidential social media profiles is also a first. As pointed out on the WhiteHouse.gov page about the transition of the social media profiles, many of these platforms didn't exist prior to his election in 2008.

According to the White House page, the @POTUS twitter account will be archived, wiped clean of tweets, and be handed over to Trump on January 20, 2017.

The same plan will be in place for the Twitter accounts of the White House press secretary (@SecPress), first lady (@FLOTUS), and vice president (@vp). 

The plan calls for similar actions to be taken with the Facebook, Instagram, and other social media profiles related to the presidency/White House.

Hat tip: The Hill

 

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