what drives Trump's habit of awful tweets

[paulkienitz]

I think Trump's habit of awful tweets is being driven by his craving for popularity. The same goes for a lot of the awful things he says out loud. As this article by Kevin Drum of Mother Jones points out, the intended audience is his fanbase -- it's just a nasty side effect that the rest of the world is horrified and offended, or that our overseas troops are endangered.

I think what Trump has done is found an audience that is willing to give him the cheers and praise he wants, and they're the people that nobody else wanted cheers from, so he's kind of got them monopolized. I'm talking about the racists and xenophobes and misogynists and other deplorables -- the sort of people who actually cheer for the destruction of the environment, just because they hate environmentalists; people who condone violence against women and applaud police brutality against minorities; people who despise diplomacy as an alternative to violence, and feel there should be no such thing as international law. Trump has found that by egging on the worst tendencies of America's worst citizens, in ways that few others are willing to stoop low enough to do, he can finally get that long-sought popularity. That he's pushing the country toward fascism in the process doesn't worry him at all... after all, if it did become fascist, that just neans he could have even bigger adoring crowds, and to him, that's the important matter at stake -- the one we should all be talking about first.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

1. Thing is, a lot of the responses to the Tweets he's ridiculed pretty heavily.

That's just the nature of social media for a lightning rod public figure in general.

[paulkienitz]

4. he doesn't care about twitter responses -- probably never reads them

To him, Twitter is a broadcast medium. He takes a response seriously when he sees it on television. If a policy is so unpopular that mainstream TV starts to piss all over it, then he will sometimes actually back down. It's happened like three times already since the inauguration.

Of course, the backing-down may only be temporary.

[Warpy]

6. No, he just has someone count them

and the more responses he gets, the happier he is.

I have never responded to his trolling because of that. He's a sick, twisted human being and I refuse to feed his narcissism.

[randome]

2. A cerebral hemorrhage?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]

[Angry Dragon]

3. ego and a inferiority complex

[Warpy]

5. Not popularity, attention

If he had a mob of a million people at the White House gates with torches and pitchforks, he'd be as happy as he could be because he'd be the center of attention.

This is narcissim. Don't expect any rationality to it.