Things have been messed up for Donald Trump ever since he lost the most awaited presidential election in the recent history of the United States. The results showed how his countrymen were waiting for the moment to declare the fate of four years of his presidency and replace him with Joe Biden, a contender who many saw would "work in favour of the fellow Americans".
Shortly before the race was called, Trump claimed that he won the election "by a lot." In fact, for multiple hours after the Biden news was announced, Trump's tweet stood as his latest.
After the race was officially called for Biden, the warning link Twitter embedded under the tweet led to a moment saying Biden did indeed win the election.
This is what happens when objective reality clashes with Trump's view of how he wants things to be. That's not all, though. When people search the word "loser", internet throws up a name at the top spot that users have been able to replicate this: 45th President of the United States of America.
Trump's special treatment on Twitter isn't over yet
The challenges are far from over for the outgoing president as he is to hold the office until January 2021. As a world leader, that means that Twitter won't delete his tweets, for example, or suspend his account despite spreading misinformation. As a result, Trump has been losing Twitter followers since he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden – while the Democratic president-elect has been adding them.
According to Factbase, a website dedicated to tracking Trump's public utterances, the president has lost 133,902 followers since 17 November while the president-elect has gained 1,156,610.
In a Sunday tweet, last month, CNN host and media reporter Brian Stelter said that while Twitter followers were "surely not the most important metric in the world", it was "still worth noting: for the first time since 2015, Trump is consistently losing followers".
Trump's allegiance of biasness
On Thursday, after President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris jointly won TIME's Person of the Year, #TimeLoserTrump and #LoserOfTheYear have topped trends in the United States.
Europe's biggest news magazine, Der Spiegel, has branded Donald Trump "loser of the year" in a lengthy article criticising the president's refusal to concede the US presidential election to Biden. Der Spiegel said that the president was "a man who ... was never concerned with the common good, but always with one thing - himself."
In 2016, Trump was named Person of the Year after his shocking victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Explaining the reason behind the controversial selection, the then editor-in-chief of TIME Nancy Gibbs had said: "This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year. So which is it this year: Better or worse? The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer."
The social media has been filled with memes targeting the outgoing US president each time since his poll debacle last month.
Trump, who is still fighting tooth and nail to prove that the elections were rigged, has time and again complained about his treatment by Twitter, alleging it is biased against conservatives. Many observers expect that once he leaves office, the site will stop giving him the benefit of the doubt regarding his false and inflammatory messages.
The trend on Twitter "DiaperDon" had made Trump furious - so much so that he threatened for Section 230 to be nixed over the micro-blogging website. It's not hidden how active Trump is on Twitter. Obviously, he noticed the trend and lashed out at Twitter for "sending out totally false trends."
Section 230 is internet legislation that generally provides immunity for website publishers from third-party content, which includes social media platforms.
But it is unlikely Trump's cries will be heard.
A few days later, when the SBA data on who benefited from pandemic relief programs found Trump Organization and Kushner Companies to have profited the most from the program, #BiggestLoserTrump hit the top trends on social media.
What's more? His foul-cry, blaming Twitter for sending out "false trends," after a hashtag targeting the outgoing commander-in-chief continued to trend in the nation for several hours.
In another recent trend, netizens trolled the President of the United States after his refusal to concede and calling the election fraud.
With many lawsuits that have been filed and lost in recent weeks, Trump, at any given time on Twitter or in public appearances, has been steadily "crying" about election fraud. As a result, Twitter users used the hashtag #CrybabyTrump to poke fun at the president on Wednesday.
Trump will lose special protections on Twitter
Twitter has at various times acknowledged that Trump isn't bound by the same rules that govern the rest of us. This executive privilege has allowed him to continue posting comments that could have long
gotten any normal person banned from the platform.
More recently, the service has sought to balance misinformation/disinformation with warning labels that alternately sit below or obscure the text. During a Congressional hearing, last month, Twitter head Jack Dorsey reiterated that — once he has vacated the office — Trump will no longer be subject to the same manner of protections.
"If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away," Dorsey said.
