Timothy L. O'Brien, Columnist

Twitter Has Little to Fear From Trump

A moment’s frustration won’t push the president to destroy his favorite toy.

May 28, 2020 at 9:42 PM UTC

Updated on

May 28, 2020 at 11:07 PM UTC

Timothy L. O'Brien is senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. A former editor and reporter for the New York Times, he is author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.”

Trump is tied to Twitter. — Trump is tied to Twitter.
Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

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Donald Trump was at the steering wheel as we drove through the rain together on a New Jersey highway in 2005. He had recently considered taking the stage to play a politician in the Broadway comedy “La Cage aux Folles,” but he had other things on his mind as he glanced over at me.

“I have one asset that I think nobody else has. And that’s that if somebody writes about me badly, I sort of own my own newspaper in a way. Like I went after you on the ‘Today’ show,” he told me. “I do have the ability to fight back in the media. I can say that, ‘You, Tim, is not smart. Is a terrible guy.’”