Donald Trump, Naturally: Revisionist Environmental Policy, Global Warming Tweets, and the Unexpected Emphasis on Climate Change in the 2016 Campaign

Abstract

Does Donald Trump’s social media record explain his evolving environmental policy? How has Mr. Trump’s novel political communication strategy, his tens of thousands of Twitter posts (“tweets”), evolved in frequency, form, and content during his political transformation from pre-candidate gadfly to presidential candidate and then as the 45th US President? No policy in the early months of President Trump’s Republican administration had greater transformation than environmental policy, from vivid advocacy of fossil fuel and coal energy production, broad ecological regulatory evisceration, and the US decoupling from the Paris Climate Accord. Given that Donald Trump, less than a decade ago, advocated greater global climate change (gcc) action, Twitter analysis of the ecological contrasts and contradictions between citizen Trump and the 45th US President provides insights on how his 2009–2016 climate change, energy, and environmental tweets explain part of his unique political, and planetary, worldview.