Let’s give him some credit, though. At least he didn’t tweet during the Comey hearing. However, that would’ve been fine since D.C. bars were prepared with free shots every time he tweeted during the hearing. Seriously, I was downtown and I saw the bars FILLED during the hearing on that fateful day when Trump’s tweets turned into a drinking game.
These tweets are having a huge effect.
First, recklessness can make it hard for your enemies to predict your next movies, and Trump is brash and unpredictable. However, Putin and China haven’t really missed a step so that takes care of any benefits his recklessness might have had, if even accidentally. Now, his unpresidential nature has made is making it hard to work with our allies. That’s a negative effect that’s undebatable.
He’s also clearly shown that he doesn’t care about anyone but himself, and that mirrors his domestic policies. He’s also making it look like this country is not a good place to immigrate. That’s on top of his actually making it impossible whether someone wants to immigrate here or not because of the immigration ban, the new immigration ban, and whatever comes next.
Finally, he’s basically marketing to the world that the leader of this country is going to teach their kids at the very least bad words and bad values and that, at most, he might even take away their freedoms if he doesn’t like what they say about him. He may take away these freedoms individually or summarily take away freedoms from everyone in that person’s ‘group,’ like a minority, country, race or religion. He’s also teaching kids who are already here that it’s okay to treat people that way, and we need to counter that at every turn.
He is also limiting our projection of morality and that which we try to impress upon the world. For years, we’ve encouraged inclusiveness, democracy, human rights, equal rights, and so on. For example, we’ve guaranteed bank loans in developing countries when a small bank in a small town doesn’t want to lend to someone who is from a different tribe. We do that through USAID. Since the bank doesn’t want to take the risk because they are prejudiced toward that tribe, the United States steps in and helps that tribe by protecting the bank from default. Then, when the person or company almost always pay their debts on time (98.1% of the time to be exact), the United States tells that bank that, just because they’re from a different tribe, doesn’t mean they’re all bad, and then we encourage both tribes to come together and form a united community.
BUT NOW, Trump is making it clear he doesn’t care about any of that by almost saying exactly that in his tweets! Honestly?