Despite his best efforts, Trump continues to be outdone and outclassed by Obama.
It’s no great secret that Trump is obsessed with President Obama – fiercely jealous of him.
Charles M. Blow of The New York Times published an opinion piece last week titled “Trump’s Obama Obsession,” concluding that Trump is jealous of Obama, that “It’s like a 71-year-old male version of Jan from what I would call the Bratty Bunch: Obama, Obama, Obama.”
Trump wants to be Obama — held in high esteem. But, alas, Trump is Trump, and that is now and has always been trashy. Trump accrued financial wealth, but he never accrued cultural capital, at least not among the people from whom he most wanted it.
Therefore, Trump is constantly whining about not being sufficiently applauded, commended, thanked, liked. His emotional injury is measured in his mind against Obama. How could Obama have been so celebrated while he is so reviled?
Continuing, Blow explains that Trump’s problems are not just at home – they are abroad as well, writing that: “The whole world seemed to love Obama — and by extension, held America in high regard — but the world loathes Trump.”
It’s also no great secret that Obama consistently outsmarts and outclasses Trump, like the time he roasted Trump during the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner – which, incidentally, just might explain why Trump refused to attend the dinner this year.
There’s even photographic evidence that Trump’s not half the man Obama is when it comes to having class. Take for instance the following two photos showing the stark difference between the two men.
The first photograph shows Trump neglecting to escort his wife, Melania, down the steps of Air Force One as they arrived in Florida on Sunday, April 16th of this year to attend an Easter Service at the Episcopal Church, Bethesda-by-the-Sea, the oldest house of worship in Palm Beach. The second photo shows President Obama escorting Michelle down the steps of Air Force One as they arrived in a windy Austin, Texas, where the president gave a speech at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library for a Civil Rights Summit marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
He did it again. Not half the man. pic.twitter.com/BY4gd3UAqB
— CAŦMAN (@subzerov690) April 20, 2017
Last September a couple of photos contrasting Pres. Obama and Trump circulated on social media that perfectly represented the difference between the two men as well.
The first photo, taken by Loren Elliot of the Tampa Bay Times, shows Trump as he walks in the rain with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as they arrived at a campaign rally in Tampa on August 24, 2016.
The second photo, by Jewel Samad for Getty Images, shows Pres. Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as they arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on April 18, 2013. As The Daily Beast reported at the time, the Obamas were boarding Air Force One to head to Boston “to mourn victims of the deadly marathon attacks” that killed 3 civilians and injured an estimated 264 others three days earlier on April 15, 2013.
Every picture tells a story. pic.twitter.com/mnD68fA8JZ
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) September 19, 2016
It’s also no great secret that Obama is good at beating Trump at his own game, this time it turns out – using Twitter.
Philip Bump of The Washington Post, covered all the details in a July 3rd 2017 article titled “Resolved: Barack Obama is better at Twitter than Donald Trump.”
As Bump explains, Trump kept his personal Twitter account as a means to avoid the main “media’s pesky insistence on fact-checking his comments and including unflattering news in analysis of his presidency.”
In the midst of ever-increasing controversy and rage surrounding Trump’s tweets, he made the startling claim last week that his tweets define the meaning of “presidential.”
My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017
Continuing, Bump writes that “Trump’s defense of his tweeting depends largely on the idea that he’s unusually skilled at social media, playing the strings of Twitter like the first-chair violinist at the New York Philharmonic.”
“What if, instead, Trump’s not that great at Twitter? What if … Barack Obama is better?” Bump asks.
Presenting that case, Bump writes that “Overall, Trump’s two accounts — his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, and his presidential one, @POTUS — get more retweets in a month than Obama’s (@BarackObama and @POTUS44, respectively).”
However, that analysis overlooks one important fact: Trump tweets more frequently than Obama.
Continuing, Bump writes that “If we look at the number of retweets per tweet — how much engagement each tweet gets on average — we see that Obama actually fares much better than does Trump.”
And while arguably, some might consider that having more overall retweets is better than the number of retweets per post – Bump conducted an unofficial poll on Twitter “More than two-thirds of respondents figured that more retweets per tweet was the preferable metric. Meaning that Obama is using Twitter more effectively.”
And it gets worse. Bump concluded his analysis by looking at the most retweeted posts by Trump and Obama.
Explaining that date, Bump writes:
If we look at the most-retweeted tweets from each account (extending back a year or for the period that each president controlled the account), the top 10 tweets from Obama’s presidential account racked up far more retweets than any from Trump. That, objectively, is a bigger audience on a per-tweet basis…. Obama’s top seven tweets from his time as president all earned more retweets than the top 10 tweets from either of Trump’s two accounts.
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