Donald Trump might often posture as a namby-pamby snowflake-defying politician who cares little for what others think of him, but a former Twitter employee has detailed how his White House desperately tried to get a mean tweet by Chrissy Teigen about him deleted.
Anika Navaroli, who was crucial in dealings between Twitter and the United States government, testified at a House Oversight Committee about the lengths Trump’s team went to in attempts to remove negative comments about him on the platform. If this sounds a bit like media censorship to you, you’d be correct.
The tweet in question is hardly the most groundbreaking insult either; Teigen called Trump a “pu**y ass b*tch” in 2019 following the former gameshow host making snide remarks about Teigen and her husband. Fully-grown adults acting like children in a playground is a very fitting description for Trump’s entire presidency, but particularly this.
Had this happened under the Elon Musk ownership of Twitter, it’s worth wondering if he would kowtow to the demands of Trump. Musk has spent considerable time allying himself with right-wing individuals and libertarians, as well as acting like a bit of a child himself over criticism.
Trump is one of the greatest demagogues politics has seen in several decades, with so much of his appeal coming from an ability to make blatantly untrue statements in rapid-fire, stopping any real evaluation of what he’s said. His presidency was marred with petty grudges and internal disagreements, so him (or his team) demanding the tweet being removed feels fairly par for the course.
Teigen will no doubt take great pleasure in this news, as will many more who have seen through Trump’s abrasive media strategy for years.