Donald Trump got a Twitch channel, from which he’s currently livestreaming a rally in Minneapolis. This is how we live now.
As of this writing, Trump’s channel has almost 9,000 followers, and about 8,700 are watching his rally in Minnesota. The chat is moving rapidly, but there are lot of walls of “IMPEACH,” as well as a lot of emotes. Chat doesn’t appear to be moderated, so view it at your own risk.
My colleague Nathan suspects some video game streamers’ communities are spamming the chat, as evidenced by emotes of streamer Forsen’s face, but honestly, it’s hard to tell what’s going on at all, which sums up this livestream pretty well.
“That’s a lot of media,” he was saying as I tuned in, to boos in the crowd. “They are so dishonest and, frankly, they are so bad for our country, and they could be so good. Maybe they’ll change and maybe they won’t. I’ve been waiting for a long time.”
Trump isn’t the first politician to take to the streaming site. recent Amazon boycott.
Amazon owns Twitch; The Verge points out that Trump has a contentious history with the company, so it’s a bit of surprise to see him on its platform. Maybe that Fortnite vote is more potent than we think.
“Isn’t it better when I go off script?” Trump is saying now.
This will end well.
Comments
12 responses to “Donald Trump Has A Twitch Channel Now”
Will he stream the impeachment hearing too? Should make for some fun viewing.
What’s going to be interesting is whether he ends up in the same situation as his Twitter account where he can’t ban anyone because he uses it for official policy announcements and to ban someone is a real violation of First Amendment rights. (As opposed to all these other supposed violations by private companies)
How well do twitch enforce policies relating to racial discrimination?
Not asking for any particular reason, just curious.
The sick thing is shutting down his stream based on racist comments he makes will only work in his favour and further polarise his hardcore fanbase.
They won’t.
They will take the same approach Twitter is taking.
Do nothing because he is the president and not banning him is better than banning him.
The US government is already in the planning stages of a huge investigation into the tech sector. You really think these companies want to give him any reason to speed it up?
The US government is currently in the process of a Major Anti-Trust probe of the US Tech Sector which includes big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter etc.
These big companies don’t want to poke the beehive more than they already have in Trump’s eyes.
And to anyone reading my comments on this. Don’t take my comments as an endorsement of the small-handed lunatic, I am merely stating reality.
I’ve been hearing this argument a lot as of late: Don’t impeach/investigate/any other sort of consequences because it will further polarise his base. Really? How much further? Have you heard them? Anybody who is a Trump supporter at this point is as slavering and rabid as they can get. Back in 2016 the day after he was elected, it was already established that Trump supporters were one of the most hardcore and dedicated voting bases in decades and that has only become truer as they have been forced to defend their lord against truth, reality, common decency and the law of the land. They will vote for Trump in 2020 and nothing anybody can do will either convince them not to, or allow them to vote more than once; that’s the hill where they will die (or preferably, kill).
On the other hand, he needs to start suffering consequences or the precedent of impunity he’s setting will forever change the face of politics in America and likely the world.
I’m not arguing against it, just stating a fact.
Not agreeing with it makes it any less true.
The face of politics in the US has already changed dramatically and started before Trump.
The concentrated and inorganic effort to spread it to the rest of the world has been happening for a while now as more and more countries are influenced to pursue the same divisive ideologies.
Well he can do what he wants because apparently the rules are different depending on which person you are or which country you’re criticising
I don’t see this ending well. Twitch is already in the news at present with the latest livestreamed shooting, and the last thing they need is some anonymous gamer deciding to post a threatening ‘joke’ in his chat. It’ll be all over Fox, and the subpoenas for revealing the identities of folks in that chat will happen.
obviously trump is terrible and so forth, i find it interesting that politicans havent jumped on the idea ouse using streaming sites like twitch and youtube and mixer. they were quick to jump on to twitter and facebook and have no problem having debates on them
This is frightening. He’s obviously trying to influence young people by using the service. Which is dangerous to our society at best…
Wonder if they’ll shut him down for all the awful racist shit he says?
Just don’t mention Hong Kong ok?
To have been a fly on a wall during the conversation where some edgy young aide proposed this idea.
“Tweech? What the hell is that?”
“It is another social media platform sir, the difference is that people stream video instead of posting texts. It’s mostly used by video-gamers.”
“Videogames? I thought we were supposed to hate those, no? We blame them for shootings and whatnot.”
“Yes sir, but it turns out that some of those gamers are the kind of people who normally would connect with your message of racism, nationalism, white supremacism and the such, but because they are young and obsessed with games, they don’t tune on to Fox News or other of our propaganda channels.”
“They don’t watch Fox News? I thought that was treason and punishable by death.”
“No sir, we’ve talked about this several times. it’s sadly not the case.”
“Well, we should make it be so, I’m sure Vlad and Kim do it and I want to be cool like them.”
“Right away, sir” *aide files it under ‘shit Trump wants that it’s a bit too extreme (at least before the reelection) so just nod and hope that he’ll forget about it like always’* “In the meantime, we should try the Twitch thing, sir.”
“Eh, not sure. Sounds like more work and I haven’t played golf in almost 3 days!”
“Allow me to rephrase, Mr Trump: being in Twitch is one of the smartest things you’ve ever thought of, Mr Trump. People will be in awe of your incredible intelligence, Mr Trump. Trump.”
“Ha, you’re right! Just this morning while taking a shit the thought just dropped into my mind: ‘Donald, you should post videos in Wicht, your base will love it. What a genius idea Don, you’ve done it again!’”
“You are truly the most stable genius of our era, sir.”
“AHEM”
“…of history, I mean, of course.”