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If you were in any doubt about the decline of the mainstream media establishment, look no further than the recent announcement by President Joe Biden that he was abandoning his 2024 presidential bid. Rather than hold a press conference with the mainstream media, or offer an exclusive interview to CNN, Biden chose to leave a single, solitary post on X explaining his move.
You might say X marks the spot for big news. As X CEO Linda Yaccarino pointed out, “X is where history happens.” And X owner Elon Musk has long made the case that all important breaking news happens on X first. If you want to be in the know about what’s happening in any situation, you need to be on X.
The pros of using X
Even veteran White House staffers were blindsided by the move. Only a small coterie of Biden advisors knew what was going to happen, and everybody else was held in the dark until the last possible moment. The news broke at 1:46 pm ET on X. Members of the Biden team were notified at 1:45 pm ET. Thus, even if one of them had the idea of leaking the news to the media, it would have been too late. By the time they figured out what was happening, and took the time to open up the X app on their mobile phone (assuming, of course, that they have an X account), it would have been too late.
Thus, if you’re going to portray this change in communication strategy in the best possible light, you might say that a social media-first communication strategy is the only real way to prevent leaks in today’s world. So, from this perspective, it perhaps made sense to launch the news on X. It helped to prevent any leaks.
But what was strange about the news drop on social media (first X, then Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) was that there wasn’t much of an immediate follow-up by the White House. Joe Biden never appeared in public, and he never answered questions from the media. It took him a full 72 hours to come up with a brief 10-minute address to the American nation, during which he didn’t explain much of anything. It came across as some kind of campaign ad, filled with commentary about his potential legacy, and vague statements about stepping down to “save democracy.”
The cons of using X
So maybe the PR strategy from the Biden team wasn’t so clever after all. Maybe it was simply the easiest, most expedient way to deal with a difficult situation: an 81-year-old sitting president in obvious cognitive decline. Nobody really thinks that Joe Biden himself wrote that tweet, or even that he pushed the button to send that tweet. One of his campaign staffers surely did that. And they did so because they couldn’t possibly risk having him show up in public and deliver live remarks.
If anything, the idea of dropping a solitary tweet on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon raises the obvious question: Who’s actually running the country right now? Just hours before, Biden’s supporters and staffers were vigorously denying that he was ever going to exit the race. According to them, Biden had no intention of ever going away. But then, just like that, he was gone.
Will the next president also embrace X?
It will be interesting to see what happens with the next president, whether it is Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. While Trump has been a long-term supporter of Twitter, ever since he got kicked off the platform, he has preferred to use Truth Social for all his important breaking news. And Harris – while she might pretend to be down with all the cool kids – has no real history of using social media as a political communication tool.
But for now, keep your eyes on X for the next three to four months. Surely, if something big goes down between now and the November election, you won’t find it on CNN or Fox News first. Instead, you’ll find it on X.
