How Trump Crafts His Social Media Posts Couldn't Be Less Surprising

Donald Trump has a signature style when it comes to social media. There are plenty of insults directed at his political rivals, odd capitalization in the middle of sentences, and then the all caps (seemingly peak Trump anger) posts. He was a prolific user of X (formerly known as Twitter) until Trump got banned from X in January 2021 after the Capitol insurrection. This spurred Trump to launch his own social media company called Truth Social in 2022. But while the platform may be different, his stream-of-consciousness style of rants about his political opponents hasn't changed. With a sneak peek behind the scenes at Trump's campaign, it looks like his rapid-fire social media posts are literally his real-time gut reactions being refined and then typed up on computers by aides.

In a clip from "Art of the Surge" — a docuseries about the 2024 election from the Trump team and airing on the Tucker Carlson Network — Trump watches the Fox News coverage of Kamala Harris speaking at the Democratic National Convention. He is seen drinking a Coke and dictating his angry social media posts while watching the screen. Florida Representative Matt Gaetz is seen in the clip supporting and hyping up Trump as is Tulsi Gabbard, and other aides who are providing him with additional ideas. Trump posted more than 50 times during Harris' speech. One of his posts was simply, "IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?" via ABC News.

The clip of Donald Trump dictating social media posts has been shared widely, and as you might expect, critics came after him hard. One person wrote on X, "A little kid rage tweeting while inwardly jealous is both funny and sad." Another commented on how Trump was getting input from supporters during the speech, writing, "It takes a village... to sound that ridiculous."

Others found amusement in the whole thing. "Lmao 'post I hate Taylor Swift,'" one person tweeted in reference to what seemed like Trump's response to Swift endorsing Kamala Harris. While one person wrote, "Typing tweets into Word reminds me of the episode of 'The Office' where Creed asked Ryan to make him a blog." A couple of people in the Instagram comments noted that there seemed to be a plate of chicken nuggets next to the former president. Trump's love affair with fast food is legendary.

There weren't too many Trump supporters chiming in, but there were those who noted it seemed like it was just an example Trump's debate prep team watching Harris' speech and getting talking points.

There are more things left unanswered in the clip of Donald Trump's posts during Kamala Harris' DNC speech. One thing we didn't get to see in the clip is if Trump is the one who mandates the odd capitalization, if the aide typing them up just knows when he'd like to see them, or if they mark the words that he'd put particular emphasis on as he spoke. His capitalization habits led one person to tweet about the woman actually doing the typing, "Does she use caps lock for the all upper case tweets or does she just hold down the shift key?"

Others questioned what the situation looked like when Trump posts in the middle of the night. "Is this woman with him when he rages at all hours?" someone asked. Our guess is that at some point Trump's posting on his own. Otherwise, it seems unlikely that we would have ever seen one of his most infamous posts — "Despite the negative press covfefe" posted at 12:06 a.m. in May 2017 (via USA Today). Perhaps those on Trump's team saw posts like that and have tried to limit his unfettered access to his accounts. There's no way to know.