Here I decided to take a look at some of Trump’s most popular catchphrases as told by Russian trolls associated with the IRA. If you want to learn more about the data here, please check out the About Page and if you want to learn more about how I’m using the data, check out a previous post on this data set. Meanwhile, I’m here to tell you some of the stories the data helps to show!
Crooked Hillary
This plot is particularly interesting because of the limited time frame of the Tweets. This is because Trump only first Tweeted out about “Crooked Hillary” in a Tweet on April 17th, 2016. From this point on, we begin to see a trickling of Tweets related to Hillary and her crookedness. We see an incredible large spike in mentions of “Crooked Hillary” by the Russian trolls in early October of 2016 which aligns perfectly with the leaking of her private emails. After Election day though, we see mentions of Hillary die down to just a couple mentions (if any) per day.
Later, we see a small clustering of mentions of “Crooked Hillary” during the Charlottesville Riots in mid-August of 2017 which I found to be a bit peculiar because at this point Trump had already won the election and there was, from my perspective, very little reason to mention her. I believe that this may be a result of Tweets prior to Election day that were being retweeted during this tumultuous time.
Fake News
Trump’s first tweeted about “Fake News” on December 10th, 2016 in a Tweet ridiculing CNN which correlates, almost exactly, to the small bump in mentions of “Fake News” in the latter part of 2016. Progressively, the number of mentions of fake news dies down and many of the peaks from later points in time are directly connected with times when Trump references, in his own Twitter, the “fake news”.
In late November of 2017, and residually in early December 2017, we see the number of mentions of “fake news” skyrocket. This is a result of the Russian Investigation where Trump was being accused of working with the Russians. As a result, the Russian trolls faithfully responded by bombarding Twitter feeds with claims of “fake news” by media sources reporting on the issue.
Make America Great Again (#MAGA)
Unsurprisingly, we see the well-known campaign slogan of Donald Trump peaking in early October of 2016, associated with the Hillary Clinton email leaks, and with his election victory in early November of 2016. After these events we see a steady, but not particularly irregular flow of Tweets praising the slogan with calls to “Make America Great Again”.
In the time frame surrounding the Charlottesville riots, we see a resurgence in the number of Tweets touting the phrase MAGA. This is presumably because it was used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis as a rallying cry to join in the protests and fight against forces threatening their America.
The Failing New York Times
What I found to be interesting in this plot is that it seems that while there are only a few tweets mentioning the New York Times as a failing organization, they are pretty consistent. I presume that Russian trolls aren’t a fan of the New York Times and continue to refer to it as “The Failing New York Times”.
And the man himself: TRUMP!
It’d be impossible for me to create a post about Trump’s favorite phrases without referencing what just might be his favorite word of all: Trump! The name that will forever be inscribed in the history books as the unlikely winner of the 2016 US Presidential Election and 45th President of the United States surely deserves its own analysis.
We can see that when Trump first announced his candidacy that he received little to no attention from the Russian trolls that would eventually get fully behind him. The majority of 2015 is quiet on the Trump front. As the likelihood of Trump’s GOP nomination began to climb, we see the number of mentions begin to steadily increase with a sudden relative spike in mentions once he secured the official GOP nomination on July 19th, 2016. From here on it was off to the races for the man and his name.
Predictably, we see a spike in “Trump” mentions upon winning the Presidential Election in early November of 2016 and a decent cluster of Tweets at the start of the New Year and Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony on January 20th of 2017. Again, somewhat unsurprisingly, we see the number of Donald Trump mentions skyrocket during the Charlottesville riots which has proven itself to have been a very active day in the IRA and among the Russian trolls. As these IRA accounts began to be identified by Twitter, we see the number of tweets decrease in the latter part of 2017 and early 2018.
Overall, I’d say that the trolls did their duty of spreading disinformation and the words of Trump well during critical events.