One President With Two Very Different Twitter Voices

America inaugurated two very different presidents on Jan 20.

One, who goes by the Twitter handle @POTUS, is gracious, understated and humble. Since taking office, @POTUS has posted seven messages, three of them merely to say thank you. The second president is the more familiar one. Posting to Twitter under the handle @realDonaldTrump, he is full of braggadocio, prone to leave out facts, sometimes harshly critical of his adversaries and more than a bit thin-skinned. In a half-dozen Twitter messages since his inauguration, @realDonaldTrump boasted about “GREAT reviews” for his Inaugural Address and noted with pride that 31 million people in the United States had watched his inauguration on television — making sure to note that it was more than the number who watched President Obama’s inauguration four years ago.

The two Twitter accounts are, of course, different handles for the same man. The @realDonaldTrump account, Trump’s personal account since March 2009, has 21.4 million followers. The @POTUS account, the official presidential handle, which he inherited, has 14.3 million followers. Trump’s personal account simply identifies him as “45th President of the United States of America.” The bio on the official account adds: “Tweets by @DanScavino. Tweets by #POTUS signed -DJT.” (Dan Scavino is the new White House social media director.) So far, none of the official posts have been signed -DJT, even the one that reads, “On behalf of my entire family, THANK YOU!”