Twitter brought out the worst in Trump — and not just Trump

January 11, 2021 | 9:05pm | Updated January 11, 2021 | 9:05pm Enlarge Image Last Friday, Twitter permanently shutdown President Trump’s Twitter account. AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump was the president of the Twitter. What radio was to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and TV to Ronald Reagan, communicating 280 characters at a time on a ­social-media platform that is a watchword for hyperactive inanity was to Trump. It is symbolically appropriate that the effective end of his power after the siege of the US Capitol has coincided with the suspension of his Twitter account. He may well get impeached a second time, but for now, the punishment that really stings is Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey deciding after sitting down with his woke colleagues that Trump must pay the ultimate price for his post-election misinformation and agitation. This judgment is as arbitrary as Dorsey’s worst critics would expect, and it will be impossible for Twitter to enforce anything resembling a consistent line following its Trump suspension (the platform didn’t seem particularly exercised by all the voices valorizing last summer’s riots as an ­ “uprising”). But there is no doubting Dorsey’s power. He has rendered the president of the United States practically…
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