Trump: The First Digital Media President
A President that social media deserves
In his years in the political wilderness, before America decided to re-up his reality show for season 2, Trump got better at manipulating digital media. In season 1 the Trump reality project used social media largely as a source for data, but also as a bludgeon wielded against its political enemies. This time however, Trump, the first Presidential candidate to own a social media platform, used his television celebrity to colonize America’s favorite addiction — the cellphone screen. Or, as Trump’s Chief pollster Tony Fabrizio told Politico:
Fabrizio: MMA fights. Joe Rogan. We think of them as very specific things, but the symbolism — It says something about him that she couldn’t capture.
Where (Kamala Harris) doing the big speech or having the big debate, the conventional warfare, traditional campaign tactics. Donald Trump goes to the McDonald’s drive-through. But in the year 2024, when we’re all living on our phones, a big speech at the Ellipse vs. Trump at the drive-through, which is going to break through?
Fabrizio’s hyper-thumotic bluster notwithstanding, he is not entirely without a point. Particularly about describing the campaign in terms of conventional and asymmetrical warfare. This wasn’t just a “Change” election, it was a change-of-medium-election. Let’s go back in time a bit to add some context. In the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debates, the golden heir of Camelot became our first television President. Roughly a decade into general adoption in America, television was still a new medium by 1960, adding a visual dimension to radio, which was wholly sonic.
John Kennedy was young, good-looking and had the cool, vigorous but breezy confidence of a winner. He was made for television and television was made for guys like him. By contrast, his opponent Dick Nixon came off as too hot and shifty for the medium, looking exhausted, sporting a light grey suit that faded into the set background. “Nixon’s discomfort and sweaty upper lip made him look untrustworthy and unsteady,” Democratic analyst Dan Payne remembered for McLuhan Galaxy. Our first television President was born.
Sixty-five years later, in 2025, we have Donald J. Trump, becomes the first social media President. The former TV star is the only former President to start a social media company. Endorsed, curiously enough, by the son of JFK’s brother (and a conspiracist podcaster). Trump has over 91 million followers on the microblogging platform, X, which is more than the population of Canada and Greenland combined. As much as I detest the man and his politics, the addition of Kennedy to his coalition was ultimately good politics. It created a permission structure for yoga moms and conspiracists to board the Trump train and probably opened up the world of podcasts for exploration by his campaign staff. Kennedy, Jr gave up his perch in the podcast antivax sphere to became a Trump surrogate by August 2024. Conservative Substacker Sarah Snitsar Churchill says she read the digital leaves one year earlier:
I saw the signs back in August of 2023 after the first Republican presidential debate, when I wrote that Elon Musk — then the newly-minted owner of X — and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson had won the night. Fox News had broadcasted a poorly moderated debate, for which candidates were provided questions ahead of time. Meanwhile, X aired Tucker’s pre-recorded interview with Trump, and the viewership trounced that of his former Fox colleagues.
The day after the debate, Fox News announced their broadcast reached an audience of 12.8 million.
When I wrote my analysis of the first GOP debate, Tucker’s 46-minute X video had been viewed over 186.4 million times.
…. Fast forward to August of 2024, and that’s how many viewers Theo Von’s interview with Trump got on Youtube. (Meanwhile, Von’s interview with Vance amassed 5.5 million views.) Then Joe Rogan interviewed Trump in October, and that video was viewed on Youtube over 53 million times — much better than the 43 million viewers who tuned in to CNN to watch Trump debate Biden in June.
Trump’s reach on independent shows dwarfed the reach of cable news.
The Substack post is called The Media is Dying. Long Live New Media. It speaks mostly to how the new media ecosystem essentially bro-washes Trumps rougher edges, making him seem more palatable, like just one of the guys. The whitewashing was left largely unanswered by HarrisWorld, which was more concerned with “big” speeches and fundraising, in what can only be properly construed under the category of conventional warfare. And podcasting, in so far as it is shared (and commented upon) content, is a key part of this new social media ecosystem where Trump’s relatability was amplified. The candidate that wins on likeability is generally the one that most voters would rather have a beer with. In fine, Trump — and his campaign team — clearly got better at manipulating digital media.
This election cycle, neither major party candidate appeared to revere legacy media like 60 Minutes or even the Washington Post. Legacy media quite simply receded further into the rearview mirror of American history. “In general, television networks don’t have the audience they once did,” David Bauder wrote, elegiacally, for the Free Speech center. “CNN, for example, reached 1.24 million viewers per evening during the third quarter of 2016, when Trump first ran, and 924,000 this year, according to the Nielsen company.” While Harris met with Alex Cooper from the “Call Her Daddy” podcast as well as “All the Smoke,” a lot of legacy media newspapers and magazines were not a major part of her media plans in 2024. Bauder added a final note: “The picture is more dire at newspapers, which collectively boasted 37.8 million in Sunday circulation in 2016 and dropped to 20.9 million by 2022, the Pew Research Center said.”
Mike Wendling of BBC News chronicled TrumpWorld’s early forays into void that is the manosphere:
In August the Trump campaign told reporters that they are targeting a key group of voters that makes up just over a tenth of the electorate in swing states. They’re mostly younger men, and mostly white, but the group includes more Latinos and Asian-Americans than the general population.
And they believe they can reach these often fickle voters by putting Trump on shows hosted by people like Von, internet pranksters Nelk Boys, YouTuber Logan Paul and Adin Ross, a livestreaming gamer who has repeatedly been banned from sites for violating rules on offensive language.
Exactly the type of persuadable voter that speaks Trump’s language. And if some of those names don’t seem familiar to you, they should. Combined, they have access to tens of millions of engaged viewers and listeners, largely men and, I suspect, often irregular voters. The pendulum swings; the vibe shifts. And beyond the manosphere and the sports media ecosystem, which played very strongly this year, there are also the Web 2.0 executives themselves — Zuck, Brinn, Altmann, Nadella — who at present seem to be following in the mode of X.com owner and Trump enthusiast, Elon Musk.
On the subject of the technology-Industrial Complex, there is the matter of Web 3, the next iteration of social media and the tech oligarchs who are its champions. But Trump had to campaign to win over the crypto bros; and campaign he did. Trump once famously called cryptos as “scam” in 2021, but then he was asked to deliver the keynote speech at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville on July 27, 2024, the former President had a Paul in Damascus moment. At the precise moment when Trump mentioned firing Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler in Nashville, the crowd cheered ferociously. Trump got a “pop from the audience” — as they say in professional wrestling kayfabe. Trump seemed genuinely taken aback by the crowds bloodthirst. "Wow. I didn't know he was that unpopular," he said. "Let me say it again. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler." The YouTube video has been viewed over 132, 000 times on YouTube. Gensler has since announced he will step down.
The crypto bros have proven to be capable allies. The leading crypto super PACs spent $131 million in Congressional races this election cycle. Nothing more needs to be added about Elon — an early dogecoin whale — and his million-dollar a day sweepstakes in swing-state Pennsylvania. One of the new Trump administration’s first priorities when it assumes office next week will be fulfilling his campaign promises to his Web3 BFFs. “(SEC Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda) are expected to kick off the early stages of that rule-writing process, likely with a call for industry and public feedback, the two sources said,” according to Hannah Long and Chris Prentice. “Reuters and others have previously reported that the SEC is also likely to quickly rescind accounting guidance that has made it prohibitively costly for some listed companies to hold crypto tokens on behalf of third parties.” On December 4th, Bitcoin reached an all-time high at $103,332.30, but it will probably go further than that (before inevitably crashing).
Finally, there is talk of a strategic crypto reserve, which sounds, quite frankly terrifying. What is the possibility that Trump tries to erase the debt his tax cuts incur with all that imaginary digital money? Because the Technology-Industrial Complex, you see, has needs. Wants. And, to be sure, the money and power to fulfil their first digital media President’s every unholy ambition.
“On Wednesday, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani announced that a framework for an exchange of prisoners and hostages, leading to a ceasefire in the war in the Gaza Strip, has been agreed to by both Israel and Hamas. The announcement comes after months of intensive, on-again, off-again negotiations by multiple countries. The end of Israel’s devastating military onslaught, the release of prisoners and hostages, and the increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza which it will enable are most welcome. But the challenges ahead are tremendous. And it should have, and could have, come much sooner. Last May, Biden outlined the contours of a three-stage deal. In the first, there would be a six-week ceasefire, Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners would be released, Israeli forces would withdraw from populated areas of Gaza, and humanitarian aid would be vastly increased into Gaza. Israel and Hamas would use this time to negotiate the terms of a permanent ceasefire. Based on early reports, this deal looks very similar to that one. But as I wrote shortly after Biden’s announcement last year, it lacked the essential component of necessary pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept, which Biden has steadfastly refused to apply. Incoming Trump envoy Steve Witkoff’s apparent willingness to apply that pressure seemingly forced this breakthrough. “The pressure Trump is exerting right now is not the kind that Israel expected from him,” Israeli commentator Jacob Bardugo, a Netanyahu supporter, said Monday. ‘The pressure is the essence of the matter.’” (Matt Duss/MSNBC)
“Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait this week wrote a long essay on the future of AI in media and journalism. It's an informative read for many reasons, not the least of which is that Bloomberg has invested heavily in building AI into its content operations. In fact, Micklethwait's essay reveals a nice bit of media trivia: of the 5,000 pieces of content Bloomberg publishes per day, AI touches about one-third of them. That gives Micklethwait's perspective an authority that few of his peers — if any — can match.” (Pete Pachal/Media Copilot)
“At least 78 bodies of unauthorized mine workers and more than 200 living miners were retrieved from a deep gold mine in South Africa amid rescue operations this week, with rights advocates estimating potentially dozens more are deceased in the mine. Officials claimed the deaths resulted from starvation and dehydration. Hundreds of workers—mostly from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho—have been inside the mine since at least July, searching for trace amounts of gold to be sold illicitly by unofficial groups. In November, officials blockaded the mine and cut off food, water, and other supplies to force the miners out to face arrest, part of a broader anti-illegal mining operation. The Buffelsfontein gold mine—roughly 100 miles southwest of Johannesburg—is an 8,000-foot-deep shaft that has been officially closed since 2013. The region's goldfield is one of the most productive historically, with deposits deep underground requiring extensive mining works (see history). Officials estimate South Africa contains more than 6,000 abandoned gold mines left over from its longtime dominance in the industry.” (1440)