President-elect Donald Trump is well on his way to be an entirely new kind of "Tweeter in Chief," with no plans to cut back on his frequent use of Twitter despite the disapproval of the majority of Americans and a range of security risks.
He's tweeting despite the fact that this week a new NBC/WSJ poll reported that 69 percent of Americans believe Trump's Twitter habits are a "bad thing" and want him to cut back. Just 26 percent of respondents said Trump's use of Twitter is good, agreeing with the statement that "it allows a president to directly communicate to people immediately." It's no surprise that Democrats overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump's tweets — just 8 percent say it's good. And Republicans are divided, with 47 percent calling his tweets a bad idea.
Though Trump will inherit the @POTUS handle President Barack Obama established in May 2015, along with its 13.2 million followers, Trump won't give up his personal account, which has 20.3 million followers, and plans to keep tweeting from it. The Obama administration's "digital transition" team will wipe the timelines clean of @POTUS accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and will archive all that content.
We'll see whether Trump's team starts tweeting from the official @POTUS account, as President Obama's team has. In addition to the official @POTUS account, @BarackObama has 80.7 million followers, one of the most popular accounts on Twitter. His staff runs the account and Tweets that are written by President Obama are signed "–bo."
Ahead of the inauguration Trump laid out his plans to continue tweeting, especially early in the morning, though he insisted he doesn't really like it. In an interview on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" he said "I don't like tweeting. I have other things I could be doing. But I get very dishonest media, very dishonest press. And it's my only way that I can counteract." Trump said "if the press were honest, which it's not, I would absolutely not use Twitter."
He'll keep tweeting despite not only the resistance of the American people, but also concerns about the safety of the platform. Of course Trump's account could be hacked even if he's taking precautions — various corporate accounts including Jeep and Burger King were hacked, along with the accounts of Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
And just this past Monday we got a look at what kind of errors are possible: President-elect Trump mistakenly quoted the wrong account when trying to mention his daughter Ivanka. He tweeted: "@realDonaldTrump @Ivanka Trump is great, a woman with real character and class." But his daughter is @IvankaTrump — one word — not @Ivanka.