Twitter’s decision to cancel Donald Trump, Insurrectionist was a boon to the nation’s mental health. I don’t have any metrics to back that statement up, of course, but then I’m not telling anyone to inject bleach or shove any light bulbs up my arse. (By the way, my mother-in-law was an ER nurse for many years, so I can tell you with a reasonable measure of confidence that the last thing this country needs is more light bulbs jammed in people’s orifices.)
But it’s not just Twitter that’s been purging. Recent data from SocialFlow indicates that, while our long, national nightmare isn’t exactly over, at the very least it’s fading fast.
The big picture: During the first month of his post-presidency, Trump remained as discussed as he was when he was in office, when he dominated social and traditional media. His numbers have plunged the past couple weeks.
- During the first four weeks after he left office, daily clicks to Trump articles — indexed to 100, based on highs and lows during the past year — averaged 53.
- In the last two weeks, the average has fallen to 21.
Whew!
As Axios notes, some of this disappearing act has been of Trump’s own choosing. He gave his barmy, lie-filled (i.e., standard) CPAC speech on Feb. 28 but has largely been invisible the rest of the time. My original theory was that he was stuck in his toilet like Winnie the Pooh’s head in a honey jar and the Palm Beach PD’s Jaws of Life was broken, with no federal money available to replace it.
Then he showed up at CPAC looking only slightly like a trenchcoat filled with mescaline-besotted prairie chickens propping up a genetically altered muskmelon with Art Garfunkel’s gently used merkin stapled to it. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that was the real Trump.
Then I saw his deeply callow “statements” (i.e., tweets) and knew for fucking sure he was still with us.
But that’s neither here nor there, because he’s fading … fading … fading away.
So here’s my prediction. In four years, after Biden is through steering the ship of state out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Trump will have shrunk to a tiny comic sans asterisk. He’ll be seen as the failed, disgraced pr*sident he was, and we’ll all look back and laugh.
Or, if not that, at the very least we’ll stop napalming our Underoos quite as much.
”This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry.” — Bette Midler on author Aldous J. Pennyfarthing via Twitter. Say “ba-bye” to the former guy. The long-anticipated EPILOGUE to Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump is now available for FREE. Download your copy here! And don’t forget to check out the rest of AJP’s oeuvre here.
