The MAGA right's social media addiction could spell doom for President Donald Trump as he fails to maintain the "staid" demeanor that allowed former President Barack Obama to thrive, columnist Ezra Klein has argued.
Klein's Sunday column for the New York Times took aim at the far-right's addiction to X under the ownership of the world's wealthiest man, Elon Musk.
"There is a reason President Obama’s Twitter presence was staid while President Trump’s posts remain electric," wrote Klein. "There is a reason so many of Twitter’s most addicted users call it 'the hellsite' ... we feel worse about our world and each other the more time we spend on them."
Klein argues that Musk's moves to make X a "hothouse" for far-right rhetoric have turned the platform into a dark and disturbing place for the voters Trump and the MAGA right need to rally.
It's also a place where Democrats can find ample evidence of the right's increasingly radical views, argued Klein.
"In dismantling Twitter’s guardrails against outright racism and anti-Semitism, Musk has filled the right with Groypers and white supremacists who will be a constant problem in Republican politics for years to come," Klein wrote.
"Democrats paid a price for forming their politics on Twitter; the right will pay a price for forming theirs on X."
Klein argued Musk's leadership has also shattered the hold that Twitter had on political elites — and that's a good thing.
Now, he argued, there is no one social media site that political leaders can use to measure and monitor the current political climate as a whole.
"This has been a crazy era, on all sides of politics, because much of it has taken place atop platforms that derange us for profit," he wrote. "Trying to stay as sane as possible requires constant effort. But the alternative is worse."