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I was sitting in a Baltimore conference room in 2016 when my friend Tom Geddes asked me why I wasn’t on Twitter.
I told him that I thought it was “stupid,” and that I wouldn’t be able to get it to work right. Technology and I have our disagreements — to say the least. The last time someone told me to AirDrop something, I responded by saying, “I don’t even know what that means.” I’m that guy, but worse. Truly.
Tom said I should do it, and he offered to get me started. He took my phone and signed me up. Later, when there were more than a million people following me I had to call Tom and ask him if he remembered the password. He did.
Twitter is a cesspool. It always has been. It has coarsened society by allowing the instantaneous global transmission of any thought at any moment behind the safety of a keyboard and/or through bots. It is a virtual space and an isolating one.
I spent thousands of hours on television sets between 2011 and 2016 before I signed up for Twitter. It was there that I had my first exposure to the platform’s impact. With very few exceptions, nearly every single person with whom I ever appeared on television immediately picked up their phone at commercial breaks to see what people on Twitter were saying about their TV appearance.
The amorphous digital mob served as a police function controlling the allowable boundaries of discussion within any tribe. Any deviation from the expectations around allowable discourse would result in ferocious digital confrontation and attack. Twitter has an illusory power. Is what is happening on a phone in your hand real, or is what is in front of you in the moment real. Are both?
Twitter was the weapon of choice for the biggest bully in American history to brutalize his opponents and critics. It was his gunboat of malice and division. Donald Trump used Twitter as his toxic cudgel to assault truth, reality, decency and America. It was his highway of deceit. He used it so effectively that he was able to obliterate the boundary lines between reality and his delusions. Tens of millions of people were swept along, and within their number was the entirety of the elected leadership of 99.8% of the Republican Party, who discarded every belief, position and principle for the sake of power. Twitter exposed their cynicism like an MRI scanner for the soul. It showed the collapse of character in American politics and life.
Much of the American media spent years covering every detail around what was happening on Twitter as though it was a country, instead of reporting on what was actually happening in America. The opioid crisis happened in America. The school shooting epidemic is happening in America. The veterans’ suicide crisis is happening in America. Those things are real. What happens on Twitter is not.
According to Pew Research Center, only 23 per cent of Americans say they use Twitter. As well, a minority of Twitter users create the vast majority of tweets. It is a clubby corner where the overwhelming majority of America’s political reporters exposed their cliquishness and access, while wounding the integrity of the most respected news organizations in the world.
When I joined Twitter I used it to speak out against Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. I used it to promote the importance of American democracy and warn against the dangers of an extremist movement that I took both seriously and literally from its first moments. I used Twitter to make arguments over long and disjointed threads that 1.6 million people found compelling enough to follow over these last years. I am grateful for, and amazed by, that.
I used Twitter to call out the biggest hypocrites and frauds in American life like Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Elise Stefanik. I used it to share some amazing journalism, exceptional stories, funny videos and beautiful photos.
For a time, I was also swept up in a Twitter Room Rater phenomenon when we were all adapting to being isolated in our homes, and media personalities and guests needed to show the inside of their homes during TV appearances. I was in a friendly competition with John Heilemann and Claire McCaskill. I’ve never bought so many pineapples in my life to showcase in my backgrounds, and T-shirts were sold for each of our “teams” — those who liked our homes best — to raise money in support of Native Americans during the Covid pandemic.
I used Twitter to fight. I used it to fight back against an extremist movement led by Donald Trump. I used it as a tool to promote that fight and rally people to it. I used it as a tool to build the Lincoln Project, which raised $100 million dollars in 2020 and spent $85 million of it fighting Trump and helping to narrowly defeat him.
I never threw a first digital punch on Twitter, but I responded to many and ended every one of them on my terms. Twitter is the place I was smeared and my character attacked during the Trump era for daring to speak out against him. Twitter is the place where the threats and venom accumulated and spread throughout the conservative media. It was not a happy place, but rather a battlefield of idiocy and nonsense with real world implications. The fight is over now because Trump is done. There is nothing left to warn about, but there is much left to talk about. It is time to talk about better again in America. Twitter is not the place for that.
Elon Musk is a fool. I tried to give him some advice a while back, but he clearly didn’t take it. Watching him destroy Twitter and abuse the employees who created it has been an unsurprising experience. Charlie Sykes captured it perfectly in one of his best posts from the always excellent Bulwark+. The richest man in the world is a juvenile at best, and likely much worse. His antics and tantrums are boring to me. I find his behavior and comportment contemptible.
Elon Musk is an unreliable man and an unreliable partner for the US Space program. That relationship must be re-examined. Elon Musk is not the type of man with whom a nation builds an expedition to Mars. His obnoxiousness and obtuseness are shared by a great many of his billionaire brethren and America’s vast taker class that sits atop the pyramids of power across American media, politics and business.
I’ll remain on Twitter for the time being, but will use it in a very different way. It’s not on my phone anymore and I don’t ever look at it. I’ll use it to share The Warning newsletter and repost some great content, but my fight is done. I plan to join Post News this weekend. Its tagline is “Real People, Real News, and Civil Conversations.” I hope it can live up to its promise.
I’ll say one thing about Donald Trump. He is as tough, mean, nasty and crazy as they come. There were very, very few people within the Republican Party who stood up to him and never gave an inch. I’m one of them (though, of course, I am no longer a member of the party and haven’t been since June 2018).
There were very few people who recognized the dangers around Trump’s rhetoric around refusing to concede an election and the inevitable violence that would come. I’m one of them.
Twitter was the place where all of that happened. It was a place that existed in a moment in time. That place is gone, and so is the moment.
Goodbye, Elon.
Post.News is much better than expected! See you there!
I am truly enjoying The Warning with you Steve! I’ve been a fan of yours since you were still a Republican. And I identify as an Independent voter for many, many years! Your ability to get right to the point and take apart the hilarious, ridiculous statements made by those DC republicans is something I admire and share whenever possible. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Gloria Dyer
Your biggest fan in North Carolina