Tweeter in Chief No More

Donald Trump may find himself treated like an ordinary twitizen and without the special privileges provided to world leaders

- Joshua Brustein, Sarah McGregor, and Jillian Ward

When President Trump leaves the White House on Jan. 20, one thing he’ll have to hand over to President-elect Joe Biden is his Twitter account.

Well, not that one. Trump will get to keep @realDonaldTrump, but the @POTUS account, which has 32.6 million followers, belongs to the president, whoever that may be. And while Trump has rarely used @POTUS for the diatribes and ramblings that have become synonymous with his presidency, he has used it to retweet messages from his personal account to tens of millions of people.

Trump’s loss of that additional megaphone is just one way the end of his term will set off a period of transition with his preferred online platform. While both sides have something to lose, Trump may be the one who will lose more.

The relationship between Trump and Twitter has always been complicated. His constant use of the social network has made it more politically relevant than ever before, and many Americans learned to turn to Twitter to keep track of what Trump is thinking. (One exception was Republican lawmakers, who so regularly denied reading his tweets that reporters took to carrying around printed-out versions of the president’s more controversial posts when seeking comment.) While the company’s mostly liberal employees are celebrating Biden’s victory, it’s become difficult to think of the Trump presidency without also thinking of his Twitter account and, conversely, to think of Twitter without President Trump.