Trump’s heavy use of Twitter for relaying his thoughts, both during his campaign and as President, is, depending on your point of view, evidence of tactical brilliance, evidence of a temperament fundamentally unsuited for the Presidency, evidence of a shoot-from-the-hip wildness, refreshing, horrifying, and/or disappointing. I see bits of all of these, but there’s always been something that has nagged at me about his tweets – something that I couldn’t put my finger on until today.
I caught a comment by comedian Jim Norton on his satellite radio show that cleared away the clouds and illuminated that nagging feeling: Trump uses too many exclamation points.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a seasoned Netizen (yes, the term is cringe-inducing, but nevertheless…) and have some sense that posts and comments filled with excessive capitalizations (or, worse, ALL-CAPS-SCREAMING), overuse of punctuation, over-reliance on vulgarity and insults (especially when there seems to be more effort put into creative vulgarity than cogent thought) “taint” a post with an automatic presumption of skepticism and eye-roll. People who post this way are less likely to be taken seriously by those who are willing to process ideas and think rationally about the points being made. In other words, loading a post with too many flourishes makes it seem un-serious.
So it goes with Trump’s tweets. In computer-ese, an exclamation point is referred to as a “bang,” and Trump loves his bangs. What might we make of this behavioral phenomenon. It can depend on whether you consider Trump a thin-skinned over-reactor, a buffoonish narcissist, a master persuader, a snake-oil salesman, a clever tactician, or something else. In other words, it could very well be eye-of-the-beholder, which makes any conclusion subjective. But, I think we can look past that, and consider his Twitter style from an empirical, market-forces perspective. What he has done has worked, so far. His approach, which includes both his use of Twitter and the style of his tweets, got him both nominated and elected. It has also kept his Presidency in the spotlight, it has fostered endless analysis, it has kept the news organizations that tilt against him in a perpetual lather, and it has validated and bolstered his ego.
Certainly, it makes people like you and me cringe, and deem him an unserious man. But, the empirical evidence tells us that he is not speaking to you or me. He isn’t putting much stock in what we think or what we want. He found a constituency that isn’t bothered by his love of the bang. We aren’t his people, we aren’t his “deplorables,” even though there are things we may have in common with that constituency. Understanding this is key to understanding why the calls for him becoming “serious” and “more presidential” are pointless. He got where he is by being what he is. Whether continuing this way will work for him as he pursues his agenda remains to be seen, and it’s obviously not outside the realm of possibility that he change his style at some point (he’s clearly changed his stripes before). But, today, why would he? He’s, in his words, “under siege,” and has every reason to play to his people as he has done since he first threw his hat in the ring.
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