The opening shot of the war was fired on May 4, 2009. By all appearances, it had nothing to do with war.
“Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman as he presents the Top Ten List tonight!”
When
@realDonaldTrump blasted his first bland tweet into the ether, there was little to distinguish the account from the horde of other brands, corporations, and celebrities who had also joined “
social media.” This constellation of emerging internet services, where users could create and share their own content across a network of self-selected contacts, was a place for lighthearted banter and personal connections, for oversharing and pontification, for humblebrags and advertising. That the inveterate salesman
Donald John Trump would turn to it was not surprising.
Yet beneath the inanity,
Twitter,
Facebook,
YouTube, and the like were hurtling toward a crossroads—one that would soon see them thrust into the center of civic life and global politics. Just a few years earlier, Twitter had begun as a way for groups of friends to share their “status” via text message updates. Now with 18 million users spread around the world, the startup was on the brink of a revolutionary success. But it would be driven by a different celebrity. A few weeks after Trump’s first tweet, superstar entertainer Michael Jackson died. His passing convulsed the internet in grief. Pop music’s irreplaceable loss, however, proved Twitter’s gain. Millions of people turned to the social network to mourn, reflect, and speculate. The platform’s traffic surged to a record 100,000 tweets per hour before its servers crashed. People were using social media for something new, to
experience the news together online.
Trump was also at a crossroads. The 63-year-old real estate magnate had just suffered his
fourth bankruptcy when Trump Entertainment Resorts (the holding company for his casinos, hotels, and Trump Marina) collapsed under a $1.2 billion debt and banished him from the executive board. Although he had successfully rebranded himself as a reality-tele- vision host, that shine was starting to wear off. While he would later talk about it as a top-rated show,
The Apprentice had actually fallen from its early prime-time heights to the 75th most watched show, before being put on hiatus. The celebrity spin-off that Trump was promoting was still on the air, but its ratings were also plummeting. His appearance on
Letterman was an attempt to stanch the bleeding. It wouldn’t work. In
The Celebrity Apprentice’s season finale, just six days after Trump’s first tweet, more Americans would elect to watch
Desperate Housewives and
Cold Case.
But the transformation played out slowly, at least for the internet. Trump’s initial online messaging was sporadic, coming once every few days. In the first years of life, @realDonaldTrump was obviously penned by Trump’s staff, much of it written in the third person. The feed was mostly announcements of upcoming TV appearances, marketing pitches for Trump-branded products like vitamins and key chains, and uninspired inspiring quotes (“Don’t be afraid of being unique — it’s like being afraid of your best self ”).
First Tweet---Trump
