The Tweeter's beginnings

The content of the tweet @RealDonaldTrump posted on the night of Feb. 5, 2013, was bland: A simple thank you to the actress Sherri Shepherd for flattering comments she’d made about Trump on television.

[...]

When Trump’s young social media manager [Justin McConney, who was the Trump Organization’s director of social media from 2011 to 2017] saw the tweet, he was perplexed. He typically typed and sent Trump’s tweets for the boss, but in this case he hadn’t. He did recall that Trump had been spending a lot of time in his office lately playing around with a new Android smartphone.

[...]

"I was like, 'Oh no.' "

[...]

"He needs to return to engaging directly with his fans again," advised McConney, now a social media consultant, who said Trump should look beyond Twitter and pay more attention to other platforms. The president’s Instagram account has become particularly bland and impersonal, he warned, and he wondered why Trump had not been using the platform’s popular 'Stories' function, which other politicians — including Trump’s potential 2020 Democratic rival, Beto O’Rourke — have used to great effect.

"He should be live streaming from the Oval Office," McConney said.

  Politico

And I'm like, "Oh NOOOO!"

Working out of the Trump Organization’s lunch room — the company did not know where else to put him — McConney began extolling the Internet’s virtues to Trump and his family. And he argued that Trump should transfer his free-wheeling approach to the world’s most unregulated public arena.

"I wanted the Donald Trump who is on Howard Stern, commenting on anything and everything," he said.

At the outset, this was accomplished with videos of Trump speaking straight to camera from his desk at Trump Tower, which were then posted to YouTube and linked to in tweets.

[...]

A turning point came in the spring of 2011, when Sarah Palin, then considering her own run for president, joined Trump for a pizza lunch in Manhattan. Media coverage of the outing fixated on Trump’s fork-and-knife pizza-eating technique. McConney convinced Trump to record a video blog explaining his decision.

To the mogul’s delight, his explanation — “This way you can take the top of the pizza off so you’re not just eating the crust. I like to not eat the crust so we can keep the weight down” —generated a bonus round of coverage from the likes of Time and Gawker.

“That's when he was sold on the concept of social media," McConney recalled.

Trump, used to haggling with reporters and TV producers, loved the instant gratification — and the control over his own image.

He also loved the way it allowed him to throw verbal punches.

So now we know who to thank.

I guess Trump's stopped eating pizza toppings only?

Even as the mogul embraced digital media, he did so in the most analog way possible. He had McConney print out his Twitter mentions, and he would use Sharpie pens to scribble responses, which McConney would then type up and tweet out. After appearing at events, Trump, who remained distrustful of anything he saw only on a screen, had McConney print out 8x10 glossy photos of him for his sign-off before they were posted online.

[...]

He began phoning in tweets to McConney at all hours, dictating the precise placement of dashes and exclamation points. At first, the calls would come from Melania, who saved McConney’s number before her husband did, and would hand her husband the phone after saying hello.

The calls sometimes came after midnight, other times at dawn.

[...]

Trump would call McConney on a Saturday to order up a tweet —then linger on the line for 20 minutes as others popped into his head, with Melania offering thoughts in the background.

[...]

From time to time, McConney would advise against individual tweets Trump proposed sending. Often, he would walk away from a conversation believing Trump had been dissuaded, only to see the tweet appear online 10 minutes later. That month, Trump live-tweeted the Oscars from his phone, offering thoughts like,

So he knows how Trump's cabinet and staff are feeling.

McConney, now 32 and working as a freelance consultant, stayed on at the Trump Organization until late 2017. Now that he has stopped working there, he said, he felt free to answer queries from a reporter and share the full story of his collaboration with Trump, as well as to air his critiques of the president’s social presence.

McConney says that some of Trump’s social media edge has faded since he assumed the presidency. He argues that Trump’s social media accounts rely too heavily on footage of rally crowds and of the president boarding planes. He says Trump’s feeds should include more exclusive content that generates positive media coverage.

He also advises that Trump — whose Twitter feed is now dominated by angry rants about the “fake news” media and special counsel Robert Mueller’s “WITCH HUNT!” — should lighten up.

Trump, he said, "should go back to having more of a sense of humor about himself.”

Pretty sure he never had one. He just wasn't under the brutal lights of politics.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.