As he entered his first week in office, President Joe Biden was handed a priceless gift: the blissful sound of former President Donald Trump's Twitter silence.
Gone are the pre-dawn tirades, the all-caps declarations, the "Sleepy Joe" mocking, the Fox News-driven agitations and the general incitements. Instead, Biden debuted a flurry of executive orders without ever having to deal with what surely would have been rapid-fire antagonism from the man whose legacy he was dismantling.
"Trump had an amazing ability to distract from issues. He was able to plant seeds of doubt about entire institutions and regular democratic processes", said Philip N. Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, which studies the social science of the internet. "Having him off Twitter allows the conversation about climate change to stay on topic — and about evidence. The conversation about race and social inequality can stay focused on policy ideas".
