Trump Tweets: Two Pronged Attack

One: Attack Hillary's Character.  Brand her "Crooked Hillary".  

Two:   Argue populist themes of borders, white identity, trade protection, fear of outside threats.

Trump has been busy on twitter.

Growth of Twitter followers over 6 months.  Now 10 million.

My readers who do not tweet do not understand that twitter is actually real and important.   About 10,437,000 people follow Donald Trump and get his tweets.   For comparison, the New York Times has a circulation of 1,400,000.  The winner in the 2016 election will get about 60 million votes.   

So what Donald Trump tweets is not just a silly sideshow; it is a significant element of his public communication.  People who don't tweet--or follow Trump--are blind to it but it is out there.

So Trump's tweets give some insight into what Trump considers the big themes of the campaign.   And one element of it is the constant repeat of the notion of Hillary as corrupt, expressed as Hillary's brand identity: "Crooked Hillary."  A long time reader, Bob Warren of Medford, Oregon, called it that "death of a thousand cuts" that steady drumbeat of repetition making the accusation stick.  Advertisers do it because it works and Trump's business expertise is in branding.   Trump puts his name in gold on trophy properties; he calls Hillary Crooked.

Tweet in written form

Trump tweeted 19 times in the past 24 hours.  He immediately tweeted after Hillary's speech:  "Hillary's refusal to mention Radical Islam, as she pushes a 550% increase in refugees, is more proof that she is unfit to lead the country."  

And then immediately a second tweet: "Our way of life is under threat by Radical Islam and Hillary Clinton cannot even bring herself to say the words."

And then immediately three more tweets in a burst:  "Hillary will never reform Wall Street. She is owned by Wall Street!" Then: Hillary's vision is a borderless world where working people have no power, no jobs, no safety."  Then: "Hillary's wars in the Middle East have unleashed destruction, terrorism and ISIS across the world.

Then, still in the same burst, Trump moved to Hillary's character: "No one has worse judgement than Hillary Clinton - corruption and devastation follows her wherever she goes."

Then a pause. Nine hours later the tweets began reinforcing the Hillary brand:  "Crooked Hillary Clinton made up facts about me, and "forgot" to mention the many problems of our country, in her very average scream!"

Moments after, "Crooked Hillary Clinton mentioned me 22 times in her very long and very boring speech. Many of her statements were lies and fabrications!"

And more: "Two policemen just shot in San Diego, one dead. It is only getting worse. People want LAW AND ORDER!"

Working around the mainstream media

Trump uses social media like no one else in politics. He tweets, he is on Instagram, and on Facebook. Tweets are well suited for doing the brand reinforcement. Tweets bang away repeating the Trump themes--branding Hillary as crooked, and the policy themes of fear of radical islam, borders, law and order. It is guerrilla politics: free, disruptive, powerful.

But it is a mixed blessing for Trump. He is shockingly undisciplined. Nine hours after Hillary's speech he moves off message, taking on the Marine General who said that Trump was undisciplined, careless and unfit to be president, and then billionaire and former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

"If Michael Bloomberg ran again for Mayor of New York, he wouldn't get 10% of the vote--they would run him out of town! #NeverHillary

"'Little' Michael Bloomberg, who never had the guts to run for president, knows nothing about me. His last term as Mayor was a disaster!

"General John Allen, who I never met but spoke against me last night, failed badly in his fight against ISIS. His record = BAD #NeverHillary

These comments reinforce the anti-Trump brand, the message that the DNC presented this week saying that Trump was irrevocably unsuitable to be president: thin skinned, undisciplined, mercurial, unreliable, quick to pick fights, emotionally unstable. One of the themes of this blog is that a candidate's strength is simultaneously the candidate's weakness. Trump communicates in an unfiltered and spontaneous way, and his communication is helping him and hurting him.