Donald Trump’s Twitter account was not always the powerful spectacle that it has become now. Journalist Adam Harris attempted to see how it evolved, according to the BBC.
Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore on 2011-02-10 12:47:12Trump’s history with Twitter
Trump has taken to the social media platform in the month since the election to censure what he views as unfavorable media coverage, to defend his phone calls with international leaders, and to rail against corporations that might take jobs overseas.
Trump’s interaction on Twitter started much like any other high-profile account handled by a group of marketing professionals. Trump sent his first tweet in May 2009, promoting an upcoming appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, notes the BBC.
At that time, Peter Costanzo, a marketing staffer at Trump’s publishing company, told journalist Jacob Weisberg on the Slate Trumpcast that a user was sending out parody tweets under the @DonaldTrump username. So the billionaire businessman took the @RealDonaldTrump username.
The tweets posted by Trump were mostly tagged “from Donald Trump,” but they rarely discussed politics. By June 2011, the now-President-elect started censuring now-outgoing President Barack Obama for Obamacare and taking vacations and Republicans for plans to get rid of Medicare. He tweeted that China is their enemy and that the Chinese want to destroy the U.S. Trump tweeted about 275 times from May 2009 until the end of May 2011. His Twitter posts grew from nearly 150 tweets annually to more than 100 tweets a month.
According to TrumpTwitterArchive.com, he averaged 375 tweets a month in 2016 through the end of November. On June 16, 2015, Trump declared his candidacy for President of the U.S. He retweeted more than a dozen tweets ahead of his announcement, celebrating the idea of a Trump run, notes BBC.
Trumps censures NBC
After a relatively uneventful weekend, the President-elect took to Twitter on Sunday night to target none other than NBC.
He tweeted, “Just watched @NBCNightlyNews – So biased, inaccurate and bad, point after point. Just can’t get much worse, although @CNN is right up there!
It is unclear what precisely drew the wrath of the President-elect. NBC’s Sunday night newscast did, however, include a segment on Trump’s frayed relationship with the intelligence community. In recent days, that relationship sustained another hit with the billionaire’s pushback against reports that the CIA and others in the intelligence community have concluded that Russia hacked the presidential election, notes Politico.
NBC quoted a person it described as a former senior intelligence official as saying, “It is curious that someone who refuses to take intelligence briefings has decided that he doesn’t agree with the analysis contained in them.”
