Donald Trump’s next challenge: how to keep grip on Republicans without Twitter

The president has used Twitter to punish perceived disloyalty within his party. Now he’s lost his favourite tool at a defining moment

‘Without Twitter he is just a guy talking to himself,’ a former top adviser to Trump says

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The suspended Twitter account of US President Donald Trump appears on a smartphone screen at the White House briefing room in Washington. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:27pm, 9 Jan 2021Updated: 9:27pm, 9 Jan 2021

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Alex Isenstadt on politico.com on January 8, 2021.

Donald Trump was meeting then-campaign manager Brad Parscale and other political aides in the White House Cabinet Room early last year when the president made a demand: Find me a social media platform to use other than Twitter.

Someone in the meeting had piped up with concern that Twitter – Trump’s primary outlet for communicating with his supporters and the outside world – might eventually ban him over controversial posts. The Trump team mobilised after the meeting, with Parscale starting discussions about whether to have the president take up a major presence on the Trump-friendly platform Parler, posting messages there first to drive more users to the platform.

Trump never went for the idea, according to two people familiar with the deliberations. He was too fond of Twitter, especially his enormous audience on the platform. But now, after Twitter’s Friday evening decision to permanently ban him, the president will have no choice but to start from scratch somewhere else.

And Trump is losing his online bully pulpit as he confronts an enormous political challenge: How to keep the Republican Party in lockstep behind him as a defeated ex-president, in the wake of a deadly violence at the Capitol that he stoked, and as he confronts likely impeachment proceedings.

“No question that Twitter was the president’s megaphone to his supporters and the media. In fact, without Twitter he may not have been elected in 2016,” said Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, who worked on the president’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns. “While I am sure he will find other means to communicate with his core loyalists, losing the ability to communicate to 88 million people all at once will definitely diminish his reach post-January 20.”