Saturday morning, President Trump managed to take over the Sunday talk shows again by launching a slew of tweets about various issues. He certainly captured a lot of social media chatter, with many saying he’s just on another rant rage and some saying even worse.
As a political consultant, I think more is at play here.
In a two hour span, Trump tweeted on Russia, Obamacare, Republicans in Congress, the press and the Trump agenda.
Sounds like a poll to me!
Since Trump isn’t too keen on traditional polling, which told everyone Hillary Clinton would win in an historic landslide, why wouldn’t he use his massive Twitter following to test some issues and see what pushes people’s buttons?
Here are the results:
Pretty clear results to me. Rankings were consistent across the board except #4 and #5 swapped in “Replies”, but the Trump followers were clear.
Bashing the media and touting Lou Dobbs’ A+ grade didn’t get much traction. Repealing Obamacare scored better, and it’s clear that Trump’s twitter followers are pretty sick of the Russian investigation.
But look at the numbers when Trump shines the light on Congressional Republicans! That’s a clear message – Trump supporters want Republicans they elected to support the President. Trump doesn’t usually get 28k retweets without saying “America First” or “Crooked Hillary”.
The problem is, as is usually the case, when it gets to specific issues, the Trump passion cools a bit, and it’s hard to “support the President” when the issues of the day aren’t driving the passion. Trump’s supporters are passionate about Trump.
I’ve never been a fan of putting Obamacare on the front burner. I didn’t like it when the Democrats and Obama made it their main focus at the expense of the job and economic growth, and I didn’t like it when we did the same for the past six months.
Obamacare will collapse on its own. I supported a clean repeal of Obamacare months ago with a time window to pass a replacement (though much shorter than two years). I just didn’t want the “replacement” part to take all the political oxygen from 2017. More important work will be neglected.
It’s still the economy, stupid. It’s trade. It’s bringing overseas corporate dollars home. It’s caring more about the folks back home than the folks in DC.
Trump is already off to a good start in economic terms. Unemployment is at its lowest level since 2001. Consumer confidence is higher than it ever was under Obama. Manufacturing jobs are up. If Republicans work on these things, Democrats stonewall to their own peril.
Yet, when Trump touts these numbers, even his supporters don’t retweet them. They play defense better than offense. That’s ok, but it sends mixed messages to Congressmen and Senators.
Ed Gillespie, Republican candidate for Governor, got it right in this weekend’s debate. He could disagree with specific policies here and there in a Trump budget, but he clearly stated he will work with the President and his opponent, Ralph Northam, clearly won’t.
There’s been a pretty long honeymoon for Republicans in Washington. Trump is as much a lightning rod as any Republican President I’ve seen. He makes the press shed all pretense of objectivity and makes the loonies in the left leave their moderate masks at home and show their true colors like no one else in politics.
But you can sense in these twitter numbers that the honeymoon is ending. Voters want progress. We Republicans run everything in Washington, and if we don’t “get ‘er done,” we will be done.
And as much as the President may frustrate Republicans in the Capitol, this snapshot of tweets makes it clear that voters expect Republicans they elect to support our Republican President, no matter how it might hurt their ability to get on Meet the Press.