Why Won't He Leave Me Alone?

As I make my 40-minute drive home, I find myself not being able to ignore my wrist any longer. I’m not able to resist the constant vibrations even though I am almost home. I go ahead and scroll down on my Apple Watch to see what notifications I’ve received while I’ve been on the road. I find a few news headlines, a text message, and the tweet. I don’t know why I still subscribe to his tweets because most of the time they are always the same. I’ve discovered a pattern of how he tweets and whether it’ll be a rant of sorts. There is nothing more irritating than receiving three or four notifications from Twitter in a row. Especially in the morning when I wake up. The first thing I see is a string of four or five tweets. 6 AM is the perfect time to tweet a rant apparently. I wish he would just stop tweeting so I wouldn’t have to worry about him. It’s almost like a game because I never know what is going to happen next. Staying up to date is great, but sometimes I regret delving into the addictive world of the Apple Watch.

This time the tweet reads “I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue – I hope!” from none other than @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. First of all, why does he think that “Comprehensive Background Checks” has to be capitalized? Why is “Mental Health” capitalized too? I don’t understand why he has to capitalize everything he tweets. We all learn in elementary school that only proper nouns should be capitalized, not whatever we want to be capitalized. After reading this ridiculous tweet, I just want to go to bed or maybe I should just delete Twitter? All of those phrases must have a special correlation in Trump’s mind if they get to be capitalized. Did he even go to college? Yes, he did go to college but I still find myself wondering why he writes the way he does. There has to be a reason that I am not picking up on, and I think it may just be for emphasis? Why would someone need to emphasize a tweet? It’s already only 280 characters so what is there to emphasize? Honestly, there’s no reason to stress anything in a tweet, and as an English major, it drives me insane. Twitter has become its own language over the years with shortcut text lingo before the character limit was increased from 140 characters to 280, which just happened recently. As far as the capitalization goes it’s not just in this tweet; he does it all the time. He always has to highlight whatever he is working on or make some strange point with his capitalization. It's also pretty embarrassing, if you ask me. The leader of the free world has tweeting habits comparable to a teenage girl in middle school.

A song that comes on the radio catches my attention briefly and interrupts my thoughts only because it’s Lindsay Ell’s new single “Criminal,” but I’m still thinking to myself this is just the beginning of a string of tweets that he’s going to send out. The tweets show everyone that even if Congress doesn’t do anything to pass stricter gun laws that he advocated for it and he isn’t necessarily the bad guy. Why is he suddenly interested in gun laws? Seems to go against his Republican base which doesn’t make sense if he thinks he wants to run again in 2020 so why would he go against his homies? The only solution I can come up with is that he’s only interested in himself. It's all about his persona and what he can do to make himself look good. Whatever it takes, right? I try to follow what is going on with politics, so that’s why I convinced myself it was okay for my wrist to vibrate every few hours with an absurd update from the man himself.

He also loves to capitalize “Fake News Media” like it is its own network. He never goes long without tweeting about the fake news. “I have been much tougher on Russia than Obama, just look at the facts. Total Fake News!” (@realDonaldTrump) Another example of his favorite two words to capitalize. I’ve discovered a tweeting pattern and he does not go more than a few days without addressing fake news. It is also important to note that his idea of fake news is anything that doesn’t align with his agenda but that is an entirely different issue. I don’t know who is letting him tweet this stuff out because someone should be double checking it! Please, just let someone double check them before it goes out on the internet forever! I have to wonder what people in other countries think of our president. He is the president after all and if he cannot write a Tweet well, then why is he even in office? We’ve already become the laughing stock of other countries just because we elected a reality TV star to run our country but if you bring Twitter into the conversation, we immediately strikeout. We are now a global joke all thanks to the tweeting habits of our president.

Lately, his favorite topic to tweet about is the Russia investigation. I’ve observed that he tweets about it at least once a week. In fact, I went about a month back on his Twitter account and found he tweeted “witch hunt” nine times. Talk about excessive! I was right about my once-a-week theory! By continuously trying to reassure his supporters (and Twitter followers) that there was no collusion, they will slowly start to believe him. It’s all about his image and trying to get people to believe anything he writes. It’s become a comedic affair—there’s a Twitter account (@RealPressSecBot) that transforms Trump’s tweets into an official White House Press release.

Let’s be honest for a minute. It’s not just his absurd capitalization habits that drive me up a wall; it’s also his style of writing. The way he composes his tweets and what kind of message he sends (regardless of political context) really gets to me. Zachary Crockett published a phenomenal article on Vox.com that analyzes his rhetoric by breaking down the manner of his tweets, commonly used adjectives, exclamation point use, capitalizations, what he talks about, his most common phrases, and who he mentions in his tweets. Crockett’s results are not exactly surprising if you ask me. I’m going to pretend like you’re totally interested and asked me about his findings. Let’s explore this article together! 45 percent of his tweets are negative, and most tend to be insulting: “Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes. The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all the others!” (@realDonaldTrump). I would consider this insulting and negative, wouldn’t you? His style is all about himself. He wants her to run for president just so he can expose her, whatever that is supposed to mean. I also wonder who he’s talking about when he says that she will be defeated like all the others. Who are the other people he is referring to? He tweets anytime he can as long as it's for personal gain and it becomes very egotistical if you analyze his tweets closely. Me, myself, and I seem to be his Twitter motto! Have you noticed the exclamation mark trend? Crockett states that 76 percent of his tweets include exclamation points with “enjoy!” being the most commonly used. This article was published on May 16, 2016, before he was elected and I’m sure the statistics would be different now, but you get the point.

I’ve concluded that his Twitter page is one giant publicity stunt. It keeps everyone talking about him and issues he is trying to resolve, but after looking at who he follows it’s even more clear: it’s all about himself. He follows eight Trump organizations and all of his family members and exclusively Republican figures. If he followed others not associated with his organization or political party, then his base would not trust him. CNN has an interesting faux Twitter feed based solely on who Donald Trump follows, and all of the tweets align with his political stances. I would think as a President, you would want to read as much as you can from all kinds of different views to better serve the people who elected you, but what would I know?

I’d like to know more about his Twitter habits because they seem rather impulsive. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could be a fly on the wall just for one day to figure out his process? I’m pretty picky when it comes to what I tweet and I would compare Trump’s Twitter account to a whiny 14-year-old girl. Let’s be honest, that’s what it reads like. Whenever he does an interview with someone and it doesn’t go well he usually tweets something shitty at the interviewer or calls it fake news in order to make himself look good. Someday, his tweets will catch up with him because you can’t hide behind the blue light of your iPhone forever, it will come back to haunt you. Isn’t that what we teach young children in middle school and high school? Never post anything negative that would keep you from getting a job or getting into college but the president seems to disregard that concept of social media etiquette.

I’m almost home for the evening, and I’m thinking about all of the other strange grammatical tendencies Mr. Trump has on Twitter. My favorite tweet no longer exists because it was deleted six hours after it was posted and I followed the drama closely. In May of 2016, he tweeted a cryptic message around midnight that said “Despite constant negative press covfefe” (Abadi) so did he think deleting it meant that it would never come back to haunt him? It appears that he attempted to spell coverage but utterly failed. The drama centered around covfefe continued: “Who can figure out the true meaning of 'Covfefe'??? Enjoy!” (Abadi) Not only is he attempting to defend his peculiar misspelling, but what is going on with the three question marks? I find it useless and odd. I remember the day I received that notification and I laughed so hard I cried. Let’s all take a moment and think about how dull the internet would be without screenshots of these tweets that are no longer accessible. I’ll refer to this time period of Trump’s presidency by calling it “The Infamous Covfefe Incident of 2016” because what else should define his campaign? If you have an idea, please let me know. I’d love to hear it! There were so many fabulous moments it’s hard to pick one but I feel like I can’t go wrong with a Twitter catastrophe. It also made for some pretty great memes. I still seem them posted on Twitter every once in a while and I tend to go ahead and press the retweet button.

I know that Twitter is full of nonsense with or without our president's embarrassing tweeting habits. It's embarrassing for several reasons, obviously for the grammatical problems but his wife advocates for anti-cyberbullying. In reality, I don't think she realizes that her husband cyberbullies so many people on Twitter! Just a few days ago he tweeted "Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn't know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don't threaten people Joe!" It sounds like a whiny teenager who didn't get his way. The New York Times has noticed this issue and Katie Rogers addresses this by pairing Melania Trump's public appearances and messages with contradictory tweets sent out by her husband the same day. Oh, the irony. According to Rogers, on October 23, 2017 Melania visited a middle school in Detroit and emphasized the importance of kindness and compassion. Later that day, Donald Trump tweeted "Two dozen NFL players continue to kneel during the National Anthem, showing total disrespect to our Flag & Country. No leadership in NFL!" Is this what we want to teach our children? That this behavior is okay? It is not okay.

An article from businessinsider.com explains how Trump’s tweets are not the only grammatical issues located within his administration. Press releases have contained misspellings and President Trumps’ inauguration poster used “to” instead of “too” (Abadi). What does this all say about our president and his administration? Honestly, it’s just really pathetic if you ask me. He has all of these people that work for him but they can’t spell correctly? I find it hard to believe that no one regulates his Twitter account. I guess his supporters don’t see anything wrong with his grammatical tendencies like I do. It must not be hurting his image enough for them to fix it. I think they need an entire team of English majors to set them straight. I finally pull into the driveway thinking how I should just go to bed after all of this, but my final thought is that we could make America grammatically correct again!