The Guy Who Taught Trump to Tweet Owes Us All a Goddamn Apology
Perhaps at some point over the two years, upon learning that Donald Trump had once again used his personal Twitter account to disseminate vile anti-Muslim agitprop or implement bigotry as official policy or threaten nuclear annihilation or admit to crimes or just generally be an asshole to someone he can't control, you have idly wondered, Wait, how did this happen? Who is responsible for plunging America into this dystopian fever dream in which the resolution of every issue of global consequence hinges on whims of an angry old man, expressed 280 characters at a time, with no regard for standard capitalization conventions?
At last, we have something resembling an answer to these questions, although I should warn you that large chunks of that answer are as exactly as depressing and/or infuriating as you'd expect. On Thursday, Politico published an extensive interview with one Justin McConney, the 32-year-old freelance social media consultant who spent six years working for Trump before leaving in 2017.
If you set aside Trump's own agency in being an unhinged, racist boor who feels compelled to share of those characteristics with the world using any method available to him, the @realdonaldtrump Twitter account's prevalence our lives is, more or less, all Justin McConney's fault.
"The moment I found out Trump could tweet himself was comparable to the moment in 'Jurassic Park' when Dr. Grant realized that velociraptors could open doors," recalled McConney, who was the Trump Organization’s director of social media from 2011 to 2017. "I was like, 'Oh no.'"
McConney's origin story is similar to those of most characters who become part of Trump's inner circle: some combination of opportunism, nepotism, and convenience. His father was the Trump Organization's controller, and in 2011, a few executives asked McConney, a 24-year-old film school graduate, to create a highlight reel of the company's golf courses for an upcoming event. The final product caught the eye of the boss, who invited him to Trump Tower for a meeting; there, McConney pitched him on boosting his Twitter activity, which at the time consisted mostly of anodyne posts promoting his latest book.
Trump seemed vaguely interested. His company had dabbled in the area, but Trump had little understanding of it.
"I’ve heard of that," McConney recalled Trump saying. “Isn’t that what [then-President Barack] Obama used?"
Trump did not take, shall we say, naturally to the service, at first employing many of the same tactics preferred by your aunt who politely calls to tell you that she likes a photo she saw you post on Facebook.
He had McConney print out his Twitter mentions, and he would use Sharpie pens to scribble responses, which McConney would then type up and tweet out. After appearing at events, Trump, who remained distrustful of anything he saw only on a screen, had McConney print out 8x10 glossy photos of him for his signoff before they were posted online.
As Trump grew more enchanted with social media's potential to boost his Q score, though, he began calling at all hours to dictate tweets about whatever was on his mind—Rosie O'Donnell, the latest Anthony Wiener scandal—to McConney, who sounds as if he was slowly realizing that he had taken worst fucking job in the world.
Trump would call McConney on a Saturday to order up a tweet — then linger on the line for 20 minutes as others popped into his head, with Melania offering thoughts in the background. "'Dude,’ I’m thinking in my head, ‘It's the weekend,’" McConney recalled.
The rest of the timeline sort of summarizes Trump's grim descent from, like, weighing in on Robert Pattinson's relationship with Kristen Stewart, to attacking President Obama to, beginning in 2015, bullying into submission whichever GOP presidential hopeful was closest to him in the polls at the moment, to today, when his Fox & Friends-inspired missives regularly send global markets into a tailspin. McConney notes that over the years, he tried without success to convince his boss not to send some of his more bombastic tweets, which is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect the person who enabled Donald Trump to tweet would say if given the opportunity to explain himself.
There is a zero percent chance that Donald Trump would have been elected president without Twitter, and this is not only true because of the presence on the platform of some very savvy Russian intelligence officials. Even before he officially launched his political career, the medium that brings out the worst in everyone allowed Trump to evade the cautious, unimaginative brand of PR to which most candidates adhere, and to instead project his trademark unfiltered bravado that supporters mistook for some combination of courage, acumen, and authenticity. Justin McConney was very good at his job, and we are all worse off because of it.
