The Trump-Clinton Twitter war: Bludgeon vs. stiletto
NEW YORK (AP) — Back in June, when Donald Trump slammed President Barack Obama's endorsement of Hillary Clinton on Twitter, the Democrat's campaign was quick to tweet back a chilly three-word response: "Delete your account ."
"People are using Twitter to connect more directly to the live events, moments and candidates of this campaign in a way that voters have never been able to do before," says Adam Sharp, Twitter's head of news, government and elections.
The former reality-TV star and GOP presidential nominee draws outsized attention for what he's tweeting and retweeting on a near-daily basis, most recently for his attacks on fellow Republicans and unsupported claims that the Nov. 8 election will be "rigged."
During his primary campaign, Trump drew regular news coverage for Twitter assaults that bludgeoned opponents with insults and sometimes baseless charges.
While he constantly refers to Clinton as "Crooked Hillary" and has continued to criticize the media for reporting that he is falling behind in the polls, he's also launched long, and sometimes late-night, Twitter broadsides on a beauty queen, the Muslim family of a slain U.S. soldier and a federal judge.
Trump, who joined Twitter in 2009, has long used the medium as a direct channel to the public for promoting himself and testing the political waters — for instance, by fueling the lie that Obama wasn't born in the U.S.
Trump's campaign staffers do sometimes seize the wheel, as when the account tweeted "thoughts and prayers " for NBA star Dwayne Wade following the shooting death of his cousin in August.
(Rare tweets directly from the candidate are signed "-H.") Many of the campaign's tweets are the typical boilerplate of politics — thanks to supporters, reiterations of the candidate's positions, forwarding news of endorsements and other developments.
Clinton's digital team offered Snapchat filters during the GOP convention that let people paste o