eyes off of Trump

My family loves talking all things political, and what usually begins as a calm discussion ends in an intense, contentious debate. Avoiding yet another argument, I kept things fun and read some of President Donald Trump’s tweets aloud to my mother.

I began with: “… throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart … I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star, to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius…and a very stable genius at that!”

My mother laughed at the fact that the ruler of the free world just called himself a genius. Her response was to defend him, saying that he’d accomplished everything he tweeted.

Her unwavering support of Trump made me question how many other people are brainwashed by his tweets, taking them as indisputable truths. It seems that less and less people are questioning what our president tells us. It seems fewer and fewer people are paying attention. Trump went to Twitter with an agenda; he was prepared to use the network to communicate with people all over the globe. Today, that account has 46.3 million followers. He has manipulated an entire system of engaging with the public, of informing the people. He will throw certain truths to his tweets and then distort it to his own reality. He is taking advantage of the online world in order to deceive the people who are only partly paying attention.

The end of January marks one year that Trump has been in office. That’s one year of the public trust in the hands of a man who considers himself a genius because as we’ve been told, he’s like, really smart.

We can’t afford to not pay attention.

Nina Mahaleris

Augusta

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