THE ECHO: Weekly Roundup of Political Discussion on Twitter (March 29-April 4, 2018)
Laura Ingraham Schooled by David Hogg, President Trump Attacks Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos, China Tariffs Expand #TradeWar, Scott Pruitt in Trouble, Facebook’s Crisis Management
Counterpunching and side-stepping bullies won the week on political Twitter in the United States. Fox News host Laura Ingraham unnecessarily swiped at Parkland high student shooting survivor David Hogg for complaining about his college rejections, which he returned so effectively, she took an unplanned vacation. President Donald Trump announced tariffs against China, which they redirected so strongly that Larry Kudlow was forced to explain from his corner at the National Economic Council that the tariffs were just “the first proposals.” Trump also attempted to knock down Amazon.com and its CEO Jeff Bezos for costing the postal service “massive amounts of money”, which was debunked widely. Bezos let the punch slide by and Amazon’s stock rebounded quickly in three days.
Media Professional Dropped by Teenager
Laura Ingraham is a successful multi-platform political media host who has millions of followers on television, radio, in print and online. David Hogg is a teenager whose activism as a result of surviving the Parkland school shooting has made him a target for conspiracy theories and, this week, Ms. Ingraham’s Twitter account. Ingraham’s sucker-punch at Hogg for not getting into the college of his choice, UCLA, and whining about it. Hogg’s reply re-directed the force of Ingraham’s jab at Fox News advertisers, which resulted in fifteen of them dropping the program.
Ingraham clearly underestimated Hogg and apologized on the way out to her short-term sabbatical, which Hogg rejected. Ingraham spent the next week in her corner, off television, and the subject of 2,337,316 related tweets, up 1,146 percent from the previous week. Caution to political communicators: perhaps Americans, even on Twitter, are getting a bit sick of bullies.
Superpower Blocked by Rising Power
Donald Trump delivered on a campaign promise to fight China on trade this week and found an unexpectedly willing sparring partner. The Trump administration announced tariffs but he rejected the notion it was a trade war. China’s embassy gamely characterized their answering tariffs as “polite” and “reciprocal.”
As found previously in The ECHO, international news has rarely moved Twitter to engage. When President Xi Jinping won the opportunity to be China’s leader for life, overturning term limits, it didn’t even make our top five Hot Topics for the week. This week we found a relatively modest increase of 19 percent in related tweets (261,824 posts) about tariffs or a trade war. Trump’s aggressive trade punches were met with a nonplussed, proportionate response, and Twitter moved on to more local, and mutually aggressive, bouts.
President Sidestepped by CEO
You may not be able to avoid a bully in real life but on Twitter Jeff Bezos just demonstrated an emerging strategy to Trump’s aggressive targeting of businesses since he won election in November 2016: sidestep the blow and ignore it. Trump’s broadside at Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, which has been highly critical of him, is a bit off-kilter considering hottest the tech news is the revelations of Facebook’s 87 million account breach to Cambridge Analytica. Out of range of Trump, and agreeing to testify to Congress on April 11, tweets about Facebook dropped 39 percent from last week and Mark Zuckerberg fell off our Newsmakers list, down 48 percent.
As Trump’s punching bag, Amazon‘s Twitter volume was up 163 percent to 967,144 related tweets. Bezos cracked our Newsmakers list, up 863 percent but to only fifth place and 177,769 related tweets. What we’ve learned from our research so far is that these bumps quickly recede as Trump moves onto other targets. Bezos seems to have understood this as he ignored Trump all week and Amazon’s stock recovered from a steep drop to $1,358.96 at 3:35pm on April 2, the day of the tweet, to 1,456.75 at 3.15pm just three days later, a quick recovery.
Scott Pruitt Down for the Count
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt must be dazed from all of the blows he’s taken lately, most of which appear to be self-inflicted. The New York Times reported that a lobbyist rented to Pruitt to get a $50 per night two-bedroom condo on Capitol Hill. Other reports tie Pruitt to expensive travel, a very expensive soundproof “privacy booth” and raises for two young, female, aides despite them being rejected by the White House.
As I’m writing this, it doesn’t look like Pruitt is going to make it off the ropes. While President Trump confirmed on Thursday that he still has confidence in the embattled and controversial subcabinet member. However, from the podium, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “we’re looking into this.”
All of this reporting attracted 289,377 related tweets and, importantly, an increase of 807 percent from the previous week and signaling that attempts to stop the political bloodletting is failing. As POLITICO reminded us in its afternoon edition of The Playbook “TOMORROW IS FRIDAY.” The bell may have already rung on Pruitt.
“The ECHO” is a publication of The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM). This edition covers political activity on Twitter in the United States March 28-April 4, 2018. All data from this post, as well as our methodology, is available on our PEORIA Project website and weekly by email (subscribe here). Also available on our website is the first edition of The ECHO Quarterly, summarizing three big things this research can teach campaigns and elected officials.
