Donald Trump has credited Twitter and Facebook for his victory in the presidential elections.
He said on CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday, “The fact that I have such power in terms of numbers with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. I think it helped me win all of these races where they’re spending much more money than I spent.”
Image: FlickrSocial platforms help getting the word out
Trump said that though he did not spend as much money on advertising — both digital and traditional — as the Clinton campaign did, still he managed to win the elections due to extensive use of these social networking sites.
The President-elect told host Lesley Stahl that social media is a lot more powerful than the money they spent. His victory proved this hypothesis to a certain extent, he said. Trump said that all these networking sites serve as great forms of communication. He added that he doesn’t mean to say that he loves them, but they do help in getting the word out.
Taking a jab at CBS and other TV networks, Trump said that when TV stations run a bad or inaccurate story about him, social media serves as a mode of fighting back and putting forth his version of the story.
Very “restrained” on Twitter
Trump has garnered a lot of negative publicity in the past few months due to his tweetstorms. The most-hyped ones were those in which he belittled his fellow candidates and the one he made last month that was aimed at former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. However, since his victory, Trump has become modest, as reflected in his recent tweets, through which he mostly thanked his supporters.
“I’m going to be very restrained, if I use it at all, I’m going to be very restrained,” said Trump.
There was one exception though. On Thursday, he criticized protesters who took to the streets to object his upcoming presidency.
Just before the election, the President-elect was reportedly deprived of all social media privileges, which were restored shortly after. But Trump is a regular Twitter user, and it seems he is well aware of his follower numbers on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Trump told Stahl that across various social media platforms, he has more than 28 million followers and was adding more with every passing day. Just a day ago, he added 100,000 new followers, he said.
