I'm not trying to make Trump look good. Biden campaigned explicitly as a restorative president who was going to be a change from Trump's many indiscretions. That he allows his comms staff to indulge in this kind of juvenile, snarky Twitter discourse is quite unserious. Why can't he just be a normal president like he promised?
It's a dumb ad for frustrated political obsessives looking for joy in politics and who ordinarily get very little of that from a Biden presidency.
Part of the problem here is that Twitter once functioned as both (A) a newswire for serious press releases and public diplomacy and (B) a commercial social platform with a revenue model that is mostly based on delivering advertisements to users and selling data generated by user activity.
However, when you look at the content posted by any politician as of 2024, virtually all of it is geared toward (B). That's what the platform favors, and it's how politicians are all but required to communicate with the public in a democracy that is amusing itself to death.
I'm split on this, because I don't think it's fair to judge political figures based on how they communicate on these platforms. It's like judging whether a company's stock is a good buy based on their advertising. On the other hand, the reality is that people still treat these platforms very seriously. I wish we just could all agree that they are frivolous diversions.
It's cliche to complain about Elon Musk driving this, but in this case he's totally responsible. He took Twitter private, removing much of the investment, and now it has no choice but to behave this way to not go under, it's still bleeding millions of dollars of course.
Although I'd argue Elon actually did the world a favor even if unintentionally. Twitter was a cancer on public discourse, and anything that destroys its credibility is a positive development. If this is what Twitter discourse turns to and no one pays it serious attention anymore, then that's a massive step up from the 2016 status quo.
