Trump’s ‘Mean Tweets’ Weren’t the Problem; His Deceptive Tweets Were

A mythology has sprouted up around Donald Trump. The former president’s supporters maintain that the bad odor about their movement’s avatar is a fabrication — a superficial and silly rationalization wielded by his enemies to tarnish his record in office. They derisively categorize these offenses as little more than “mean tweets” and dismiss their significance summarily.

As one late-2018 poll revealed, most Americans never encountered Trump’s Twitter feed — either directly or secondhand via news media. Just 15 percent of those surveyed were regularly confronted with Trump’s online missives, and that minority comprised more Democrats than Republicans. When the president would summon all the vitriol of which he was capable to prosecute this feud or that — none of them are especially memorable — 80 percent indicated they either did not understand the conflict or didn’t care enough about it to change their views.