Editorial: Trump tweets his way to the White House

Andrew Austin, Editor of Hawke's Bay Today.

From the moment Donald Trump decided to run for the presidency of the United States, it was clear that he was going to be very different from any other candidate.

When he won the election he momentarily showed signs that he would settle down and follow protocol, but he soon reverted to type.

Clearly he is a man who does not like doing things the conventional way and this is almost certainly what got him elected.

He rode into the White House on a wave of discontent with the state of America and made voters, in particular the white working class, believe that he was the only person who could "make America great again".

So, one could say that the US has got the president it deserves. The majority did not vote for him - that honour went to his vanquished foe Hillary Clinton, who snared about 2.7 million more votes that Trump.

However, he won the electoral college votes and that made him the 45th president.

Since the election, the president-elect has thrown out the rule book and ruffled a few feathers in the process. A case in point is his friendly chat with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, upsetting China, which does not recognise Taiwan.

But it is his use of Twitter that has stirred the most interest. With about 16m followers, he has used this as an effective way of communicating directly with Americans.

However, it has revealed that he is still as sensitive as ever and that nothing is too small for him to go after.

The comedy show Saturday Night Live has regularly lampooned him, with Alec Baldwin doing a very good impersonation of him. This has incensed him and caused him to rant on Twitter. There have been other examples as well which suggest that his temperament is not quite presidential.

It will be interesting to see how Trump handles the demands of what surely must be one of the most difficult jobs in the world.

One thing you should expect to see is a blurring of the lines between the Trump organisation and the presidency. Let's just hope that it does not reach a point where we cannot tell the two apart.