Saturday 28 January 2023

Donald Trump is back with a vengeance

The decision to let Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram was a disaster because if you go to either social media platforms he is everywhere with his orange face and pursed lips and pointy eyes. Soon he will be back on Twitter I am sure and then it will be non-stop Trumpery. What bothers me, now that I have recently joined the Instagram and TikTok set to try and promote my spy thriller Shadow Lives, is that social media is awash with two contrasting images of the two potential rival candidates for the presidency in the 2024 election. Donald Trump is full of bombast, pledging to save America, while there are videos galore of Joe Biden looking confused, stumbling along like a robot, failing to read his autocue properly and basically sounding like a very old man who has lost his marbles. If you are an American voter and you have to decide whether Trump or Biden should be president for the four years from 2024, you would take one look at these videos and decide, no way, sorry Joe. The videos are not fake news unfortunately. What they show actually happened but of course there are no videos of Joe speaking articulately or walking purposefully. They all focus on his bad days. But to be honest, should the president of the United States have bad days? No, not really. Whereas all the images of Trump make him look super-confident and decisive. You could never say that Trump looks like a bumbling old man. That's what's so unfair about social media. People who get their news only from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or any of the other outlets will get their views shaped by the videos they watch. In which case, bye bye Joe and hello, God help us, D Trump. The US newspapers all seem to have come to the view that Trump is yesterday's man, or at least yesterday's Republican, and that the rivals for the 2024 nomination, such as Rick DeSantis, will sweep Trump aside. But take it from me, Trump is not finished yet, and with him firing on all cylinders on social media once again he is going to build a helluva momentum. The 2024 election, far more than the 2020 election, is going to be about social media and how it is exploited. Trump kmows that, Joe Biden definitely doesn't.

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