Attacks, praise and conspiracies fly as Trump tweets, a New York Times analysis finds
President Trump's tweets have become a regular fixture of his first term, helping him reach a global audience of more than 66 million followers around the world. From changing policy to firing and hiring members of his White House staff, the president has made use of the social media platform like no other American president.
A New York Times analysis looked at more than 11,000 tweets the president has sent since taking office and found that more than 5,800 of them were used to attack someone or something, while more than 2,000 of Mr. Trump's tweets included praise for himself. Karen Yourish, a New York Times editor who worked on the project, spoke with CBSN about some of the key findings.
5,889 tweets are an attack on a person or thing
The president has tweeted more attacks this year than in the previous two years combined, The Times' analysis found. More than half of President Trump's tweets are attacks on either Democrats (2,405 times), investigations such as the special counsel probe (2,065 times), or news organizations (1,308 times). He called the media the "enemy of the people" in 36 tweets and attacked immigrants in 570 tweets. But he also takes aim at members of his own administration.
"He rails against his own Federal Reserve and other officials, Jeff Sessions famously, as well as pushing immigration policy and basically threatening at times to tweet out something that he wants his aides to do, if they are refusing to do it," Yourish said.
4,876 tweets praised a person or thing
Interestingly, the person President Trump complimented the most in his tweets is himself (2,026 times). , According to The Times' analysis, he referred himself as everyone's "favorite president" on 26 occasions, and bragged about the size of his crowd or applause at events 183 times. He also praised dictators 132 times.
1,710 tweets promoted conspiracy theories
During his first week in office, President Trump claimed in a tweet that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, costing him the popular vote majority — though there is no such evidence. The Times reports he tweeted about the electoral system being "rigged" 40 times. He has also retweeted posts and shared hashtags associated with notorious conspiracy theories.
Trump's staff tried to impose a 15-minute delay on his tweets
But that didn't work. Yourish said that in the beginning of his administration, White House staff attempted to institute a regular process where communications aide Hope Hicks and others would review each message before he tweeted it out. "I think that lasted about 72 hours," Yourish said, "and [he] decided that that also wasn't going to work."
