Trump is 'more online than ever' — and it's 'not good for anyone': analysis

Although President Donald Trump is known for avoiding some forms of digital technology — including e-mail and text messaging — he is an avid social media user.

Trump, in a 2022 affidavit, wrote, "Since at least January 1, 2010, it has been my customary practice to not communicate via e-mail, text message, or other digital methods of communication." However, he uses social media extensively, and a Trump post can easily become a big news story.

According to a Washington Post report published on June 3, Trump is now using social media even more often than he did during his first presidency.

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Post journalists Drew Harwell, Clara Ence Morse and Emily Davies reported that "as of Sunday, (June 1), Trump had posted 2262 times to his company's social network Truth Social in the 132 days since his inauguration, a Washington Post analysis has found — more than three times the number of tweets he sent during the same period of his first presidency."

In an opinion column published on June 4, MSNBC's Zeeshan Aleem argues that Trump "appears to have entered a categorically new era in his posting in his second term in office" — and is doing so to the detriment of the United States.

"Trump is reportedly surprising his staff with outlandish posts fired off in the late hours of the night and early hours of the morning, sharing unfiltered thoughts that then ricochet across the internet," Aleem laments. "In other words, America's president is subjecting himself to unprecedented levels of internet brain rot. As Trump pursues his second-term policy regime — which is both more extreme and more erratic than his first — he is more online than ever, and it's not good for anyone."

During his first presidency, Trump used the former Twitter — now the Elon Musk-owned X.com — as his primary social media outlet. But now, Trump is mostly posting via his own Truth Social platform, which is part of his publicly traded company, Trump Media & Technology Group.

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"Incessantly posting pushes the public and the media to join the platform to keep abreast of the president's announcements, boosting the company's value and enriching him," Aleem explains. "He has an incentive to post for the sake of posting, to maintain a constant buzz around his platform and keep his media business in the news and at the center of the culture. But Truth Social is also a completely different informational ecosystem for Trump than Twitter was during his first term. It is almost entirely populated by MAGA diehards, and Trump's posts are met with near-universal support and celebration."

Aleem continues, "On Truth Social, Trump sits upon a digital throne, sharing a relentless stream of content with a friendly activist-type set rather than the more politically diverse demographics that made up Twitter. That could affect how Trump perceives the political world: Seeking consistent validation from the online MAGA base, cleaved from the rest of the online world, helps incentivize extra adversarial and conspiratorial commentary."

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Zeeshan Aleem's full MSNBC commentary is available at this link.