ANALYSIS: Facts and figures behind 100 days of President Trump's tweets

ByADAM KELSEY ABCNews logo
Monday, May 1, 2017

Four hundred and seventy-six: the number of times a user of the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account has clicked "Tweet" from Jan. 20 -- Inauguration Day -- through April 29.

In those first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has occupied one of the most controversial presidencies of the modern era, tangling with reporters, protesters, foreign countries and members of both major political parties, all while pursuing an aggressive agenda that for the 19 months prior he promised will "make America great again."

The Twitter account, which Trump personally utilized for over six years before launching his bid for the highest office in the United States, has become a microcosm of the operation within the White House -- reflexive, combative, ambitious, provocative, inimitable and relentlessly focused on success.

ABC News has compiled and organized every tweet from the account since the morning just before Trump took the oath of office through day 100. What follows is an analysis of the tome, composed from 9,180 words comprised of 55,444 characters.

What is he tweeting about?

Topics of the president's tweets have spanned the breadth of the administration's ambitions, from health care and immigration reform to national security and the economy. But Trump's 140-character notes don't simply ebb and flow with the tide of current events; he often dictates the news cycle himself, drawing the public's attention to new subjects and reigniting past issues.

Perhaps the most notable instance of Trump driving the discourse in Washington was his March 4 outburst in which he accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower without providing evidence. The resulting uproar engulfed intelligence committees in both chambers of Congress and led to Rep. Devin Nunes', R-California, recusal from the house investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.

A dive into commonly mentioned terms finds many of the subjects one would expect: "Democrat" and its derivatives are mentioned 36 times, almost always in tweets attacking the party, while "Republican" or "GOP" appear on 18 occasions. "Russia" is addressed 25 times, though there are just two mentions of "Putin." "Obama" is referenced 16 times and "Obamacare" another 10.

Some of the most frequent tweets are those about the media, of which there are at least 68 -- over 14 percent of all posts. The word "media" is directly cited 33 times; "fake news" shows up on 30 occasions and three of the top four handles Trump has included in tweets are media-related: @nytimes, @foxandfriends and @FoxNews with 17, 11 and 10 mentions, respectively. He has tweeted twice about the show he used to host, "The Apprentice," using both instances to attack his replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Other recurrent subjects include immigration, about which there are at least 41 tweets, and health care, which covered at least 36 messages. ABC News classifies an additional 103 tweets as "promotional," in which events, meetings, actions and initiatives are touted.

Tweets with a link to an external website number 79, while 107 include either an image or video, 20 of which came from inside the Oval Office.

When is he tweeting?

As candidate Trump faced questions over his Twitter habits during the presidential campaign, he vowed to scale back if he were to be elected.

"I'm not going to be doing it very much as president," Trump told ABC News' Jonathan Karl in a March 2016 interview, while still noting it was "a great way of communicating."

Through the first three months of his presidency, Trump showed signs of slightly scaling back. After posting 71 times in January from Inauguration Day through the end of the month (an average of 5.92 per day over that period), he tweeted 145 times in February (5.18 per day), and 129 times in March (4.16 per day). April saw a slight increase, with 131 tweets through April 29 (4.52 per day).

Jan. 20 -- Inauguration Day -- was the day with the most number of tweets (12) for 97 days, until it was matched on April 27 -- day 98.

Three of Trump's busiest weeks on Twitter came in a row, when he tweeted 47 times between Jan. 29 and Feb. 4, 42 times from Feb. 5 to Feb. 11, and 44 times between Feb. 12 and Feb. 18. This was a time period in which the administration faced the fight over Trump's first executive order limiting travel from the Middle East and Africa, the firing of national security adviser Michael Flynn and a North Korean missile test during Trump's Mar-a-Lago meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Throughout the week, there isn't much deviation in the number of tweets on a day-by-day basis. Wednesday and Friday were the most tweeted days, with 77 total tweets on each. Sunday has been the least tweeted day with 54 total.

When the day is broken into six four-hour periods, Trump most frequently posts to Twitter in the late morning between 8 a.m. and 11:59 a.m. (144 tweets), late afternoon and early evening between 4 p.m. and 7:59 p.m. (104 tweets), and early morning between 4 a.m. and 7:59 a.m. (100 tweets).

How is he tweeting?

Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump was reportedly fond of tweeting from a device running Google's Android mobile operating system. For those keeping a close eye on his timeline, a hint as to whether the Republican candidate may have personally authored the message could be found in text that accompanies tweets on certain platforms, noting the source to be "Twitter for Android."

As president, unless Trump has entirely stopped tweeting for himself, it is clear he now, at least sometimes, uses an iPhone.

The last tweet originating from an Android device came over one month ago on March 25 when the account posted, "ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!"

In total, 167 tweets (almost 36 percent) are posted from Twitter for Android, while 296 (over 63 percent) -- including the bulk of recent tweets -- originated from Twitter for iPhone.

Of the remaining 13 tweets, one is written from Twitter's web client; one from Twitter's Media Studio, which allows users to configure video and images with their posts; and 11 are Twitter Ads.

The advertisement tweets, all of which have been posted since March 31, would allow the messages to be seen by some users who do not follow Trump. It is perhaps no coincidence then that they are mostly promotional in nature -- announcing the signing of executive orders, congratulating new Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and a NASA astronaut, and welcoming the New England Patriots and the Italian prime minister to the White House, among others.

Methodology: The data used in this story is derived directly from the content of the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account, excluding tweets retweeted by the account and deleted by the account. This timeline of @realDonaldTrump tweets was compiled using HTML embed code taken from the @realDonaldTrump account's timeline. Statistics were generated by ABC News and checked using the CrowdTangle analytics tool. This timeline's filters were selected by ABC News and tweets within each category were chosen subjectively. The information in the story is accurate as of April 29, 2017 at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Related Topics