2024 Election

Trump’s First Snapchat Ad Is Despicable, Showing Him Giving the Thumbs-Up at 9/11 Event

That sounds about right.

It takes Donald Trump forever to come around on new technologies, but when he finally does, he goes all in. And he does it like there was never a time when he wasn’t on board.

He was never a fan of podcasting, and then after prodding from his stream-happy son, ended up even on the show of Adin “Butt Sniffer” Ross. He couldn’t stand the fact that Joe Rogan endorsed RFK, Jr. in the presidential race, then went on his show like they were old pals.

He even used to trash-talk cryptocurrency while he was president before, and now he’s got his own crypto bank:

But ignoring Snapchat was a bit of a surprise. After all, the failed real estate mogul has been using Twitter (now X) almost as long as I have, and I’ve been there since the beginning. He’s been on Facebook and Instagram, and so have his kids, all of this time.

Well, now he’s on Snapchat too, and when I say he went all in, I mean it. Not investment-wise, but in terms of Trumpiness.

One of the ads that Trump’s released so far includes video footage of him doing an extremely disrespectful finger-point-to-thumbs-up maneuver — during a memorial service for 9/11.

YouTube video

Filmed the day after he took a trouncing on the debate stage from Kamala Harris, the video shows Trump at the annual memorial service for the solemn day, which the New York Times describes as “an event where politics are traditionally put aside.”

That’s apparently not something that Donald Trump can do.

Brett Eagleson, which is an amazing name for someone who’s the president of the group 9/11 Justice, which represents family members of the victims of the terrorist attacks, was appalled. He noted that politicians shouldn’t use Ground Zero as a “photo opportunity” for political ads.

He also took issue with the gesture, which seemed strange for something that was, again, such a solemn event:

“I would love to know who he’s making that gesture to,” Mr. Eagleson said. “Because it certainly doesn’t seem like a gesture you would make at a solemn ceremony.”

As far as Snapchat goes, it’s not clear that Trump is doing more than simply testing it out at this point. his campaign has thus far spent just $23,000 on the platform, which isn’t even as much as he owes some cities he’s held rallies in and never paid for the services.

By contrast, Kamala Harris’s campaign has plugged her candidacy on Snapchat to the tune of $6.6 million.

That could make all the difference. The app, famous for messages that disappear after sending them, so they can’t be saved without another capturing app, is highly popular among the voting age that both camps desperately are courting.

It may explain things that Trump is still miffed at the Snapchat folks for banning his personal account after he instigated the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol that resulted in damage and even deaths. Unlike other social media platforms, Snapchat has yet to reinstate Trump’s account.

Another baffling Snapchat ad shows Kamala Harris laughing and warns users that if they don’t vote, the “liberals will get their woke agenda.”

This one really doesn’t make sense, since the 18–24 year old demographic accounts for nearly half of Snapchat users, and within that demo, two-thirds of registered voters lean Democratic or liberal. They like the word “woke.”

We’ll see how well his foray into instant social media turns out for him. This could turn into just another debacle, like his mostly-failed Truth Social platform. Trump once envisioned that to be the primary rival to Twitter, but it has since become primarily a platform for seeing Trump’s own social media posts, not communicating with others.

Regardless, I think Trump is probably a day late and a few million dollars short. His digital media spending is positively dwarfed by the Harris/Walz campaign, having been outspent on every digital and social media platform there is.

Maybe the campaign itself is wary of Trump getting too deep in the weeds with this stuff, given his mercurial nature and predisposition to say and do anything he likes. Social media lives forever, while a news cycle, he’s proven, only lasts so long.

They’re right to worry. If his first move was to post a video of him acting like a middle schooler at a funeral, who knows what could come next?

meet the author

Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. A girlfriend, a dog, two cats, and two birds round out the equation, and in his spare time, Drewbear likes to imagine what it must be like to have spare time.

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