Donald Trump, a man who has tweeted more than 34,000 times, loves making time for Twitter — despite any other obligations he now has as the president-elect. But he's not a fan of everyone he meets on Twitter. As Mashable reported earlier today, it looks like Trump is blocking people without explanation, leaving them confused, amused, and dismayed.
While there are some users making jokes or bragging about the block, others are far less enthusiastic. A blogger and freelance writer named Heather Spohr found the whole situation a little more disturbing. “I can’t see the tweets of the president-elect,” Spohr said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “He’s going to be my president. It’s absurd.”
Trump’s presence on Twitter — one of the platforms he credits for his win — has long been puzzling, controversial, and even alarming. In the last several weeks alone, Trump has used his platform — which includes 16.5 million followers — to parrot words from the account of a person claiming to be 16 in order to bully a CNN reporter. He described the Hamilton cast, who used their freedom of speech to deliver peaceful, impassioned words directly to vice president Mike Pence, as engaging in harassment. And he made absurd, unfounded claims that millions voted illegally in the election.
Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that Twitter is the platform he uses to deliver statements directly to his future constituents. It’s the simplest way a voter of any background can voice concerns to their president — unless he chooses to silence them for a few bad jokes.