Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter on Jan. 8, bringing to an end to perhaps the world’s most prolific and influential Twitter account. While Twitter has deleted all of his tweets, the Trump Twitter Archive has preserved the 56,571 utterances sent by @realDonaldTrump since his first one on May 4, 2009. What can we learn about how Trump used his account over the years?
The timeline below shows the total number of tweets he sent each week since he joined. Trump didn’t begin tweeting heavily until August 2011 and really embraced it starting in September 2012 as he weighed in on that year’s presidential election. Beginning in October 2015, he steadily decreased his Twitter use week over week through the election, at which point he began to steadily ramp up his use. But from the 2020 election through his ban, he tweeted less and less. (Click the image to enlarge it.)