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24 February 2016

Ted Cruz tweeting a “Fat Bastard“ clip at Donald Trump is normal for US election Twitter

Countless debates and TV interviews can only do so much. Unless you're shouting down Donald Trump.

By Emad Ahmed

(Photo By Ethan Miller/Getty)

So apart from waking up in a cold sweat this morning after seeing Donald Trump continue his leisurely stroll towards the Republican presidential nomination, you might have noticed third-place loser Ted Cruz tweet out a clip of Austin Powers to the GOP frontunner:

Ah, Twitter. The digital world providing politicians’ words that are either heavily managed and vetted by communications managers, or completely unfiltered directly from their brains. In the current presidential race (which has been going on for approximately 26,286,384 years), the candidates have been saying all sorts of things, producing reactions from supporters, haters and onlookers, and column inches into the stratosphere. But Twitter isn’t going anywhere just yet, proving that celebrities and public figures don’t need a news camera anymore to stir up controversy. Here’s a sample of some of the more vivid tweets from the candidates.

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Well, well, well. Among many of Jeb!’s stumbles before he unsurprisingly bowed out of the race was this picture of his own personalised gun along with the word “America” stamped alongside. It quickly reached infamy when it reached the status of having its replies collated into a BuzzFeed post.

Bernie Sanders tried reaching out to Arab-speaking supporters with a unifying message of tolerance. However, his team is currently in combat with frontrunner Hillary Clinton and also a Republican opposition which has lurched very far to the right in this race.

Mike Huckabee was one of maaany Republican candidates at the start of the year. Mentioning that you won a primary eight years ago is light-years in the world of politics, especially when you didn’t go any further in that particular election. Huckabee suspended his campaign after the Iowa caucus, achieving a phenomenal 1.8 per cent of the vote.

Another white man vying for the presidency earlier this year was former senator Rick Santorum. The dude let us all know how disappointed he was in his friend Chris Christie and reiterating his support for Marco Rubio. We share his sadness.

Former businesswoman Carly Fiorina was left watching a debate from the sofa, complaining how she wasn’t invited to take part despite taking a shocking 1.9 per cent of the vote in Iowa a few days before. She should have also refrained from comments about her leadership, given her tenure as HP’s CEO was deemed a monumental failure. She withdrew from the contest a few days after this tweet, gaining only four per cent of the vote in the subsequent New Hampshire primary.

No list would be complete without the bombastic Trump. His current tweets are the most significant, given the primaries have started. Here, he accused Ted Cruz of not being able to control his emotions, whilst ending up typing in all-caps and an exclamation mark. Now that is one classy guy.

Hillary Clinton is maintaining her image and message very well during this election, though it is leading to many voters distrusting her. Her best jab so far was just before the first Democratic debate, mocking Trump in the same way he loves to charge at others.

Although voters love to see authenticity from their politicians, it is sometimes sensible to take the easy route and share basic day-to-day stuff on social media. Here’s George Osborne in a classic photo-op situation, programming himself to successfully engage in laughter just as the shutter is pressed by the photographer.

Of course, he’d much rather you see images of him in his natural environment.

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