Trump Training: Twitter may have created Trump (just not in the way you think)

There has been lots of discussion that Twitter has been important in the rise of Trump. The main idea is that it allows him a direct line…

There has been lots of discussion that Twitter has been important in the rise of Trump. The main idea is that it allows him a direct line to voters without the media filter.

While this is likely important, I wonder if Twitter may have led to Trump’s powers of persuasion (along the lines explored by Scott Adams). Here is what Trump is gifted in: conveying an idea with only one round of ‘thought cycle.’ Consider this Tweet from the other day.

In 140 characters he links Powell to the WMD error, claims he knew it and claims that he can do better. Never mind what is true about this statement. There is an economy to it. What is more Trump does it again and again.

Compare this to the way economists, such as myself, often argue. With respect to something like free trade we say sure some jobs may be going to China but … and we talk about lower prices, long-term adjustment, and as a whole things are better for free trade. It doesn’t fit in 140 characters but what is worse is that it involves multiple ‘thought cycles’ not just one. Indeed, in the usual case, three or four. Even people who agree with economists have trouble replicating our arguments.

Politicians are better at conveying ideas than economists. So they should be. It is their job. Regardless of what you think of him, Trump is on another level. How did he get that way? After all, he didn’t come through politics.

Trump started tweeting in May 2009 announcing he would be on Letterman doing a Top 10 list. (Here was the segment in case you are interested and yes it is dripping with irony). What followed was 33,000 more tweets. That’s just over 12 a day. That’s 33,000 hours where he may have tweeted. Suffice it to say, if you believe the whole 10,000 hours to mastery notion, Trump is in that ball-park.

But think about what the Twitter training for Trump was like. First, he was limited to 140 characters. That means that he was forced into an economy that no politician can commit to with speeches, press releases and even sound bites. Second, Twitter has an extraordinary feedback mechanism. In real time, Trump would have seen the reactions to each of his tweets. That is some serious learning going on that would make any of the recent AI neural networks quite envious. What that means is that he knows what words work (“Sad!”), how to describe people efficiently (“low energy Jeb”) and how to restrict responses to a single ‘thought cycle.’

Of course, it goes without saying that Twitter isn’t at fault for all of this, but my point is that it provided a tool that may have been uniquely qualified for Trump training.