Chart: While He Still Could, How Much Did Donald Trump Tweet?

In the wake of last Wednesday's events at the US Capitol, Twitter went a step beyond attaching warning labels to President Trump's tweets and the company locked his account permanently. Trump relied on the platform to bypass traditional media channels, refute fake news and get his direct views across to hundreds of millions of people. His tweets are still freely available to browse at the Trump Twitter Archive which has monitored his Twitter activity for years.

It shows that he tweeted considerably less during his early days in office and his activity ratched up considerably in 2019. The archive shows that Trump tweeted or retweeted approximately 3,500 times in 2018, 7,700 times in 2019 and on over more than 12,000 occasions in 2020. The New York Times reported that he was tagged on Twitter at a rate of 1,000 times a minute that in 2019. His most prolific day came on June 05, 2020 when he sent 200 tweets or retweets, breaking a previous record of 142 sent on during his impeachment trial on January 23, 2020.

Trump tweeted 5.7 times per day on average during his first half year in the White House and that had grown to 34.8 times a day on average during the second half of 2020. So, with days of his presidency remaining and his megaphone seemingly silenced, where does Trump go from here? He still has the White House press briefing room at his disposal along with his press team. It may well be that Trump will return to the piece of technology that made him a star in the first place – television. If mainstream news organisations follow Twitter's move and decide against airing the president's grievances, he may continue to struggle dictating the national conversation on his own terms without access to his favourite social media platforms.

You will find more infographics at Statista, where this story was originally published.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.