Trump, Musk, Twitter, you can’t look away

Gene Collier, Tribune News Service

Whether you view it as a riotously over-covered platform that happens to be an obsession of politicos, journos and all manner of wackos, or if you just think of Twitter as the dagger in the back of a prone civilization as it bleeds out on a cold sidewalk, you have to acknowledge it’s probably never been more topical.

Any moment now, Donald J. Trump will re-emerge on Twitter after a 22-month ban for some kind of technical violation — what was it again? Oh yeah, igniting a violent attempted overthrow of the United States government. The former Buffoonatic-in-Chief will soon be tweeting his vituperative “thoughts” at the sudden urging of self-described head twit Elon Musk, who desperately needs a headliner for his flailing freak show.

Musk, already losing hundreds of millions per week on tanking Tesla stock, can’t afford to keep Twitter alive without Trump and his 80 million followers (or perhaps with them). So Musk’s stated intention that restoring banned accounts would be a matter for a “content moderation panel” quickly devolved into a one-question Twitter poll that asked for a simple yea-or-nay on whether users wanted the 45th president back on the platform. Fifty-two percent of respondents said yes, a higher approval rating than at any time in his presidency. In fact, Musk’s impromptu survey was the only popular vote Trump ever won.

“The people have spoken,” Musk tweeted. “Trump will be reinstated.”

Lest you’ve forgotten, here are some notable spasms from Trump’s unfortunate, sometimes unfathomable tweetfolio:

“Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault” — 10:37 p.m., May 8, 2013.

“Windmills are the greatest threat in the US to both bald and golden eagles. Media claims fictional ‘global warming’ is worse.” — 5:19 p.m., Sept. 9, 2014.

“Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes — AUTISM. Many such cases!”— 4:35 p.m., March 28, 2014.

You’ll note he wasn’t banned for any of that. It takes a truly vile toxin to get kicked out of a cesspool like Twitter. The tweets that helped assemble a mob that attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6 to overturn an election finally did the trick. But as some of his defenders like to say, at least Trump was consistent.

Uh-huh. This is Trump’s tweet from right after Barack Obama won reelection in 2012:

“He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country.”

So 2020 wasn’t the first time Trump called for a revolution based on a lie — Obama won the popular vote by nearly 5 million in 2012 — yet when Trump won the presidency in 2016 in the exact manner in which he mischaracterized Obama’s win, no revolution was called for.

Funny how that works. (Checking Twitter ... nothing yet.)

Meanwhile, Truth Social, the platform that sprang up to give Trump a place to rage in exile, is actually hoping that he’ll stick around because, according to the New York Post, “Trump is contractually obligated to give Truth Social a six-hour exclusive on his missives, according to a May filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.”

Sure, because Donald Trump is such a rules follower.

Relative to the “Trump is contractually obligated,” phraseology, let me put that another way.

The fact is, Trump is as desperate to get back on Twitter as Musk is to have him. When you’re running for president as the stable genius who directed losing election campaigns in 2018, 2020 and 2022 while getting impeached twice and somehow remaining the main focus of at least four major investigations, you need anything remotely positive, even if you have to make it up and tweet it out yourself.

Musk clearly can’t MAG-nify the MAGA crowd by himself. As the midterms approached, he tweeted that his “independent minded” followers should vote Republican.

They didn’t. I was hoping to use the re-emergence of Trump on Twitter as my cue to exit, but on that I keep moving the metaphorical goal posts (the real ones are really hard to move). I was going to leave Twitter for my mental health as part of New Year’s Resolutions 2020, New Year’s Resolutions 2021, and when Musk finally took over the platform, and when Marjorie Taylor Greene was reinstated Monday, and when I got up Tuesday morning.

(Checking Twitter ... nope.) But I’ve been watching this horror movie for 12 years. Now that it’s clear someone is about to escape from the insane asylum, the thunderstorm is at full boil, and the phone lines have been cut, it only makes sense to stay and see who kills the boogeyman.