Since joining Twitter seven years ago, Donald Trump has tapped out more than 34,000 tweets. That’s an average of more than 11 a day, pretty impressive for a man running a global business empire, fronting a popular TV show, and readying himself to become the 45th president of the United States.
But the results of a poll published Tuesday suggest most Americans now want the president-elect to put down his smartphone and focus instead on the job in hand.
Conducted last week by Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University, the national survey found that 59 percent of respondents said Trump should “shut down his personal Twitter account,” while 35 percent opposed the suggestion.
Trump used his Twitter account to great effect during the presidential campaign, getting his message out to around 13 million followers, with a good number of his straight-talking and combative tweets making headlines around the world. Since winning the November 8 election, his follower count has increased by several million and currently stands at more than 15.8 million.
Looking at the survey’s findings, Tim Malloy, the poll’s assistant director, said the majority of voters appear to be telling Trump, “You’ve got the job. Now be a leader not a tweeter.”
“Very restrained”
In a 60 Minutes interview following his election victory over Hillary Clinton, The Donald promised to be “very restrained” on Twitter now that he has the top job. However, since then it’s been pretty much business as usual, with Trump regularly taking to the social media service to hit back at critics in his own inimitable way.
President-elect Trump told 60 Minutes‘ Lesley Stahl that around 28 million people currently follow him on social media sites, describing the services as “a great form of communication.”
“It does get the word out,” he said in the interview. “When you give me a bad story or when you give me an inaccurate story … I have a method of fighting back.”
In that case, it’s hard to see Trump quitting his personal Twitter account, and even if he does, he’ll still have the official @POTUS account from which he’ll be able to continue his ongoing conversation with the citizens of the world.
Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,071 voters nationwide by landline and cell phones from November 17 through 20. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
