President of the United States of America is the most prestigious title that a person can hold in this country and with it comes a lot of influence and power. In my 22 years of life never have I ever seen a man in that position use their influence more than our former president Donald J. Trump. Just for background I am not saying he was the president with the most followers ever because former President Obama had over 117 million while the most former President Trump had at most 89 million. At most I am saying he is one of the only (if not the only) president to use his platform to instigate situations that sometimes didn't end well.
1. Voter Fraud
This is one the most recent times where the former president used his platform in order to spread misinformation to the public and his following. For some background, the 2020 election was a bit different because of the virus people were unable to go out and vote so instead they sent in mail ballots. This caused a back up in the postal system and it even cause it to be less inefficient than recent years when it came to counting votes for president. In analyzing the tweet below the main thig there is to talk about is the idea that President Biden stole 80 million votes in order to take the chair. To bring this phenomena all together imagine having a liking to the president and not knowing much about politics in general. You (generally speaking) would see this tweet and take it as your truth, not because you heard from a seasoned political scientist, but because the person holding the highest ranking office in this land said. During that time there was also a court case going at the same time that rejected the claim that fraud was the reason he lost the State of Pennsylvania.
In this instance I put the tweet first so that you as the reader you can come up with your own judgement than read what I have to say. If you are analyzing this tweet right off the back he gives information that isn't true. He says these things because with the influence he has on others, he knows that there would be some action following. Personally, the most intriguing phrase in this tweet is the "this is time for extreme courage." This tweet came from a man who knows his audience and what his followers will do with his words. If you didnt infer this from the title this was literally the tweet that got his followers riled up to act out that day.
In all, I didn't choose this subject to talk about whether what he did what right or wrong. I just used this as my first example to show how at the very peak of the intersection of media and politics things can be said in order to influence people.
Sources
https://apnews.com/article/analysis-trump-post-election-chaos-doubt-cae4b93cb0a730d4a3b077d25f63d2f9
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56004916
https://stacker.com/stories/6057/top-trump-tweets-election-day-2020
Hi Josh! I'm glad that you commentated on how different Donald Trump used his media platforms in comparison with other political figures. At first, at least to me, it seemed as thought it was crazy and unheard of, however as his time in office progressed, the out-of-the box things just seemed to blend into the background and become a normalcy for the president. Now that we have a different president in office, it is interesting to look back and reflect on how the platforms were used so drastically differently.
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