Donald Trump Reportedly Uses Twitter Likes To Make Policy Decisions
A new Politico report reveals that President Donald Trump likes to use Twitter not just for sparring with his opponents but also for supporting his policy decisions.
Shortly after Trump announced his plans to pull United States troops from Syria, he met with lawmakers at the White House to discuss the move. During the meeting, the president reportedly told Dan Scavino — White House Director of Social Media and Assistant to the President — to join him in the middle of the meeting to tell the lawmakers just how popular his policy is.
Scavino proceeded to show the team the positive reaction that Trump’s Syria decision received on Twitter, which apparently caught the lawmakers off guard.
Previously Trump revealed that Scavino plays a big part in crafting the tweets that he writes.
“Oftentimes, I’ll go through Dan. You know, I’ll talk it over. And he can really be a very good sounding board. A lot of common sense. He’s got a good grasp.”
The president also acknowledged Scavino’s key role during the 2016 presidential campaign and said he will be important for his 2020 reelection bid as well.
“When I was running, I knew that Hillary had 28 people — and I had Dan…. They used to say that we ran an unsophisticated campaign. And after we won, they said we ran one of the most sophisticated campaigns ever,” he said.
Dan Scavino, who runs Trump's Twitter account, holds what would be a second-tier job in any other administration. But in Trump’s world it comes with the top White House salary of $179,700. https://t.co/moqoieEFar
— POLITICO (@politico) May 16, 2019
But according to Vox, Twitter isn’t a great representation of what real-life American voters want, as the Twitter feedback comes from a limited pool. An April survey from Pew Research Center suggests that U.S. users of the social media platform are younger and more left-leaning than the average person in the general public, and also found that 10 percent of users create 80 percent of tweets. And of course, his followers are likely warmer to his political views than the average person.
Regardless, Politico suggests that social media is one of the most important pools of information for Trump when it comes to American voters. But this hasn’t stopped him from lashing out against the platform for its alleged bias against conservatives. As The Inquisitr reported, the White House recently launched a tool to gather personal experiences of this bias, although it is more than likely a data collection tool in disguise.
“No matter your views, if you suspect political bias has caused you to be censored or silenced online, we want to hear about it!” reads a White House tweet.
