One of President Trumps favorite things to brag about is how anything that he gets involved with instantly turns to gold. Of course, like most things Trump brags about, that isn’t true at all. He isn’t at all the successful business tycoon that he makes himself out to be, unless several bankruptcies and more lawsuits than can be easily counted define such success. Trump has taken his personality and spewed it all over the internet in the form of his Twitter account, and while it might be his favorite soap-box for spouting his hateful rhetoric, his presence on the platform has actually hurt the revenues of Twitter. The company has been reporting declining figures of growth since 2015, and while the company’s management once thought the presence of Trump would attract new users, it turns out that hasn’t been the case.
The original idea, which many referred to as the ‘Trump Bump’, was imagined as a way of driving engagement and bringing new and old users back to the platform. There is no denying that Trump’s use of Twitter has showcased new and unforeseen ways in which the system can be used, but that hasn’t translated to any real impact on engagement or growth. Despite the massive numbers of retweets and engagements that Trump’s accounts receive, they are still only a tiny fraction of the tremendous network’s daily activity.
Some third-party analysts are more concerned about the President’s presence on Twitter. Many believe that advertisers will start to avoid Twitter due to the unpredictability of Trump and his inane posts. The co-founder of Arete Research, Richard Kramer, who also serves as the business’s senior analyst, said that advertisers will not want to associate themselves with a platform that they see as potentially risky. He cited the case of Nordstrom, a retail giant that is currently in a dispute with President Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, over their decision to cease offering her products in their stores. Trump blasted Nordstrom for the decision on Twitter, and Kramer wonders how Twitter or Nordstrom would have reacted had they been running campaigns together on the platform. The fact that Trump might insult or otherwise degrade any brand name at his whim is enough to keep advertisers away.
It won’t be long before the President’s actions on Twitter have a real and measurable affect on the company’s bottom line, and many wonder if the executives in charge of Twitter will allow the President to continue to operate unrestrained on the platform as he does now. There are already some advertisers that have pulled money from Twitter, as well as users who don’t want to share a platform with someone like Trump. Others are also dropping his daughter’s brand of clothing, much like Nordstrom, in an effort to show they don’t condone the actions taken by the president in his first weeks in office. One of the most prominent decisions affecting this behavior is the Muslim travel ban, which was one of the clearest forms of religious persecution seen in the modern age. Thankfully, that ban has been lifted by the judiciary, who will most likely have their hands full for the next four years dealing with a president who doesn’t seem to know the laws of the United States also apply to him.
If Trump is allowed full reign over the United States in the same way he had full control of his own companies, many of which went bankrupt as a result of his untoward business practices, then there is a good chance the United States will follow the same path. The problem is that the country can’t simply go bankrupt, but much worse could certainly be possible.