• tibi@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The biggest change is that in the past, what the president thought and said was private, the messages transmitted to the public were carefully controlled, and there were several filters they had to pass through to get to the ordinary people.

    Today, through social media, we have unfiltered access to the president’s thoughts. And we’re learning why this is a bad idea.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.worldM
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      1 day ago

      All other presidents of the social media age so far have managed not to make complete fools of themselves, so maybe it has to do with this particular one.

    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I assure you, Jimmy Carter did not have thoughts of using military intervention to annex Greenland. Twitter in 1978 would have been “OMG, I got attacked by a swimming rabbit!”

      Trump really is more dangerous than all past presidents. Not even Andrew Jackson threatened to court martial politicians that didn’t support him.

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Similar thing happened with CSPAN.

      Back in the day, a Congressmember could make a speech on the floor that only their hometown press would cover. Then they could scoot to the cloak room and cut a deal to vote the opposite way. Bipartisanship was the rule.

      Once everything got read into the public record, the members were forced to actually vote for stuff they knew was crazy, but that the locals were hot for.