Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.
At the heart of Trump 2.0’s social media strategy is a modern interpretation of a musty job — the president as online influencer.
“Social media generally is defined by trends, just like anything in culture, and understanding those trends and embracing them to deliver a message is extremely important to us,” said an administration official granted anonymity to speak candidly about White House social media strategy.
The nod to ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, is evidence of the embrace of those trends. An online fad for years. ASMR refers to a bodily sensation triggered by an audio or visual stimuli such as whispering, tapping nails, or crinkling paper in front of a microphone, meant to make viewers feel at peace. The White House’s deportation ASMR video was a wink at that trend, suggesting that watching people being deported can be calming. It had the additional benefit of underscoring the president’s policy goal of getting tough on immigration....
The antagonize-and-conquer strategy has delighted a segment of the MAGA base, but it has limits. Replies to the Trump-Gaza video [below] are full of people saying they support Trump, but not the over-the-top video. Some took issue with the golden statues of Trump and a shot of bearded belly dancers, swaying by the beach.
“This may be trolling, but many of us (your supporters) are scratching our heads over this one,” read one reply.
Thus far, the Trump team has paid no heed to the objections. Like all of the social media controversies of Trump’s past, the assumption is that his supporters will eventually ignore them or get on board. And they have reason to think so — every time the administration has crossed what looked like a line, they ended up just moving the window of acceptable online discourse
