President-elect Donald Trump’s trademark practice of reaching people in the US and around the world via his Twitter account has been deplored by mainstream media on a number of occasions – yet as it seems to have already secured him the presidential office, the tweeter-in-chief is unlikely to go quiet any time soon, according to Sean Spicer, Sputnik reported.
The success of Trump's use of Twitter to communicate with people both in US and around the world "freaks the mainstream media out," Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
"You know, with all due respect, I think it freaks the mainstream media out that he has this following of over 45 plus million people that follow him on social media; that he can have a direct conversation," Spicer said. "He doesn't have to have it funneled through the media."
According to Spicer, Trump will "absolutely" continue to use his Twitter even after he moves into the White House, despite Trump's statements that he is going to be "very restrained" about his Twitter use after inauguration.
"You know what? The fact of the matter is that when he tweets, he gets results," Spicer said.
Twitter became a potent weapon for Trump during his presidential campaign last year. Most of the US mainstream media wrote off or took pleasure in mocking the Republican candidate (which gave outlets like Sputnik a lot of uncovered topics to write about), so Twitter became Trump's platform of choice for communication.
With 18.4 million followers on Twitter and 45 million on social media overall, his social media impact was apparently big enough to compensate for the lack of positive media coverage.
On December 31, Trump has posted a tweet of New Year congratulations, including those to "[his]many enemies who have fought [him] and lost so badly they just don't know what to do."
Spicer's "freaking out" characterization is not unfounded. The Independent has already called the tweet "bizarre." The Huffington Post instead resorted to sarcasm and lecturing about "the respectful thing for the soon-to-be leader of the free world to do," complete with a pack of other Twitter users' (expectedly negative) responses. CNN was more reserved, but couldn't help but leave a remark about Trump being "not quite ready to let auld acquaintances be forgot."
According to Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican who was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump, "Trump has his own way of communicating with America." At the end of the day, this way of communicating, if unusual, has proven to be quite successful.