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Banned from Twitter since early January, Trump announced his presidency in written statements emailed to journalists and posted on his website. These missives, many of which were first featured on his shuttered blog, turned his tweets into the public’s most comprehensive record of his daily thinking.
And after crunching the numbers, what’s clear is that Trump’s main focus is the election he lost.
Forty -three of the 132 post -presidential statements issued by Trump until June 9 included lies about the election. That is about 33%. These lies range from vague claims that the election was “stolen” and “cheated” to specific false statements about what happened in the various states that he lost. Trump’s second favorite topic after the presidency was bashing fellow Republicans. About 24% percent of Trump’s post -presidential statements revolted against other members of his party – sometimes in refusing to support his dishonest attempt to restore the election, other times for general failure to be honest enough with him. the post-presidential statements became the endorsement of Republican candidates. (These endorsements tend to be more formulaic and less personal than his other commentary.) Nearly 15% of the statements feature criticism from media outlets or social media companies. About 10% involve criticism of President Joe Biden or the Biden administration. About 10% discussed economic topics. (We did not include endorsement statements in which Trump said the candidate was economically good.) About 9% involve Trump of his own fame or influence. Nearly 8% involve criticism of specific Democrats other than Biden or of Democrats in general. And nearly 7% involve praising Trump’s political allies.
What the numbers show
The numbers show how often the former president is still – a full seven months after his fair and square defeat – promoting baseless nonsense that undermines American democracy. And the numbers help explain why so many Republican politicians continue to utter and defend these lies themselves. If the de facto leader of the party makes them an ongoing priority, elected officials who feel the need to stick to his or her goodwill are also not too left out by them. The numbers also confirm what CNN reported last week: people close to Trump say he has fixed the election and is less interested in the policy issues his advisers want to discuss. Only a small percentage of the 132 statements addressed the Covid-19 pandemic (about 5%) or foreign or national security policy (nearly 2%). A small 2% of the statements discussed immigration in any detail. And some of the economic references are delivered in the course of criticizing a person rather than as their own stance point. One note about the data: the percentages in this story will not be added to 100% because we assigned each statement to multiple categories if applicable. For example, this statement included an election lie, media criticism, and criticism of a Republican opponent.
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