A number of eyebrows had been raised to full mast on Tuesday morning when a visibly upset President Trump dropped an f-bomb on dwell TV. In response to a reporter’s query concerning the tentative ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Trump replied that the 2 nations “have been combating so lengthy and so onerous that they don’t know what the f-ck they’re doing,” presumably the primary time a U.S. president has purposefully unloaded that time period on digital camera.
Though Trump’s use of one of many cruder expletives would’ve been jarring at every other time, there’s a cause it might need sounded much more discordant than ordinary at this second. It’s as a result of currently the president has taken to signing off all his posts concerning the battle between Israel and Iran with an oddly formal flourish: “DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”
Whereas the distinction of Tuesday’s f-bomb is giving linguistic whiplash, it additionally highlights the baffling nature of Trump’s new social media signature—one thing that customers of X and Bluesky have already been unpacking for days.
Earlier than final Saturday, Trump had used the cumbersome sign-off solely twice earlier than, with a pair of posts commemorating Easter Sunday on April 20.
Nevertheless, after saying on Saturday that the USA had carried out bombing strikes on three nuclear services in Iran, he started utilizing the prolix word-dump much more. It has shortly turn out to be a trademark of his messaging in each step of the unfurling battle—from warning Iran to not retaliate, to dismissing its “weak” retaliation; from saying that the 2 nations had reached a ceasefire, to demanding that Israel keep on with it.
Trump’s branding continually evolves
One potential cause for this new posting behavior is that Trump is a consummate troubleshooter, and this may occasionally simply be the newest evolution of his social media branding.
Earlier this 12 months, for instance, he augmented his customary “MAGA!” sign-off, by including the all-business valediction: “Thanks in your consideration to this matter!” Trump’s verbose new sign-off might both be a strategy to additional make his posts learn like boilerplate enterprise letters, or it’s simply one thing he’s throwing towards the wall to see whether or not his supporters need him to keep it up.
Another excuse could be to differentiate sure posts among the many higher deluge of social media content material he produces. On condition that Reality Social—the platform Trump owns and the place his posts dwell—is estimated to have solely 5 million members, most individuals possible encounter Trump’s posts solely by way of media stories and screenshots on larger platforms comparable to X and Bluesky.
So it could be a shock to study that the Reality Social posts that break containment signify only a tiny fraction of the president’s prodigious output on the platform. In response to the The Washington Submit, Trump posted to Reality Social over 2,200 instances within the first 132 days of his presidency.
The tedious sign-off might be an over-the-top strategy to differentiate his posts from the myriad dispatches by his social media workforce, one thing he’s been doing all year long with the extra brevity-friendly “DJT.”
What appears probably, although, is that Trump merely needs to imbue his posts about this geopolitical battle with additional gravitas. He’s notoriously obsessive about individuals who look the half (as an illustration, by speaking about cupboard appointments by way of “central casting”), and so maybe this official-sounding sign-off is what he thinks a commander in chief is meant to sound like throughout wartime.
In any case, Trump’s new behavior of ending posts together with his full title and title, as if introducing himself in an icebreaker exercise at work, has garnered a variety of reactions on-line.
A variety of X customers have commented on the clearly pointless nature of it, whereas some posters on Bluesky have speculated about whether or not Trump thinks the formal sign-off confers particular powers to his posts, making them inviolable.
Folks on each websites rejoiced when the president by chance misspelled his first title as “Donakd” in a submit with the long-winded farewell.
A number of social media customers have additionally identified the similarities between Trump’s new communication model and the way their aged family finish texts to the household.
Trump signing his personal submit 'Donald J Trump, President Of The USA' has the vibe of when your Dad writes 'Dad' on the finish of a WhatsApp message despite the fact that it's already coming from his quantity.
— Mark Watson (@watsoncomedian.bsky.social) 2025-06-24T11:48:33.315Z
On Bluesky, the most typical response has maybe been from customers incorporating Trump’s new lengthy goodbye into the repertoire when mimicking his weird, singular model.
Like most issues this president does, it has already turn out to be a meme.
BARRON IS TELLING EVERYONE AT THE WHITE HOUSE THAT HE HAS MY NOSE. HE DOES NOT AND HAS NEVER HAD MY NOSE! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!
— Tyler (@okty.bsky.social) 2025-06-24T11:57:22.199Z
HAL. OPEN THE POD BAY DOORS. IF YOU DO NOT IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. OPEN THE POD BAY DOORS, NOW! DONALD J TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
— Jonathan Gilligan (@jgilligan.org) 2025-06-24T13:05:51.238Z
Contemplating that Trump has nearly solely used this prolonged sign-off in posts about acts associated to battle, it might be for the good thing about humanity if we by no means see it once more.
