20 Tweets in 14 Hours: Analyzing Trump’s Twitter Rampage as He Calls For Schiff’s Resignation and Binges Fox News

Joe DePaoloSep 27th, 2019, 12:51 pm
 

Trump's Twitter response to impeachment

Fourteen hours, 20 tweets.

Even by his typically high-volume standard, President Donald Trump has flooded Twitter with a series of fiery rants, Fox News clips, and attacks on Democrats — complete with a call for one major House figure to resign.

It can be extremely difficult to tell when new territory has been ventured into during this norm-shattering presidency. Still, it seems that the Ukraine controversy truly is different. And the magnitude of Trump’s Twitter activity in the past 14 hours is a good giveaway that he believes it’s different too.

But what does it all mean? Is there a pattern to these dispatches, or are they one-off ramblings? A closer look at these tweets shows they can be grouped into three categories.

1. Attacks on Schiff, Democrats

Trump going after Democrats on Twitter is, of course nothing new. Neither is the president’s calling for members of his rival party to resign.

But Trump zeroed in on House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff with a particular venom late early Friday that demands to be noticed.

The president warmed up, on Thursday night, with a rote jab at former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democrats as a whole.

But then, Trump trained his ire on the House Intel chair in a particularly confounding tweet.

Trump briefly pivoted to go after Democrats and the media (notably, New York Times reporter Peter Baker).

But then he doubled back to Schiff — calling for the congressman to step down.

Finally, he called the House Democrat “a sick man.”

And then for good measure, one more swipe at Democrats.

Lots of caps, a suggestion of mental illness, and even a nickname (albeit one bestowed in a tweet with a number of grammatical issues, which we’ll address later). Trump doesn’t just hand out nicknames — even recycled monikers like “liddle,'” which he previously used on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). To get a derisive nickname, and this much twitter attention, you have to really get under the president’s skin. Adam Schiff has clearly done so.

2. Fox Clips

Missed Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity on Thursday night? Don’t worry. You can catch up with both shows via President Trump’s Twitter feed.

The president tweeted out three lengthy clips of Dobbs and four lengthy clips of Hannity offering — both personally and through guests — full-throated defenses of Trump.

First, Trump tweeted Dobbs speaking to Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) — who amplified a point Trump had just made on Twitter by saying that Trump could not have pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky because Zelensky said he didn’t feel pressured.

Next came a clip of Dobbs speaking with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) — featuring Biggs calling the groundswell for an impeachment inquiry a “coup attempt,” and Gaetz calling it “impeachment by reflex.”

Finally from the Dobbs telecast, Trump presented footage of Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) bashing Adam Schiff.

That packed hour of Lou Dobbs Tonight evidently got the president hyped for some more Fox watching.

Hannity’s accurate show led off with a list of accomplishments by the president — some of which, such as “ended war on coal,” were nebulous and intangible, while others, such as “border wall construction underway” were deceptive. (No new wall has yet been built. Only existing wall is being refurbished).

The Sean Hannity accuracy hour continued with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) deceptively claiming that Hillary Clinton worked with Russians to impact the 2016 election.

Next up, a series of baseless, wild claims from lawyer Joe diGenova about Biden.

And finally, Trump presented one more (not at all) accurate excerpt of Hannity — this one starring Mark Levin, who wrongly referred the whistleblower as a CIA agent.

In all, Trump shared roughly 16 minutes of Hannity and five minutes of Dobbs with his followers. All of it was bombastic. All of it was favorable to the president. Little of it was true.

3. Grammatically incorrect and otherwise baffling tweets

Finally, there were tweets that just baffled on a number of levels.

First, Trump tried to advance the comical notion that he could not have pressured the Ukrainian president simply because the Ukrainian president said he felt no pressure.

Then there was this grammatical gem from the president, in which he called out CNN for typos and misspellings in a tweet riddled with both.

A random Tweet on Iran came next.

Then this all-caps, unidentified quote.

And finally, the president threw out some wild speculation about the whistleblower.

Twenty tweets. Fourteen hours. One president … on the ropes?

[Photo by Saul Loeb/Getty/AFP]

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Joe DePaolo - Senior Editor

Joe DePaolo is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Email him here: joed@mediaite.com Follow him on Twitter: @joe_depaolo