Back in February, I conducted a non-scientific experiment on Twitter to determine how often #NeverTrump was being used in comparison to other hashtags. As suspected, #NeverTrump was absolutely trending, but was not appearing on the Twitter list of U.S. trends.
To define the #NeverTrump movement loosely: In this author’s experience, the majority of the #NeverTrumpers are made up of those who dare to express their dedication to the founding father’s vision of limited government principles, i.e., the entire point of the separation of powers. Donald Trump is a big government candidate.
Since my February Twitter experiment, Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee. Many who have climbed on-board the big-government Trump train have claimed that there is no real #NeverTrump movement to speak of, only a few angry stragglers.
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Some examples:
- Fox News (Howard Kurtz and fellow anchor Brit Hume) speculates on whether journalists should portray the #NeverTrump movement as “desperate.”
- CNN’s Jake Tapper derisively refers to those who actually care about the Constitution and refuse to climb aboard the Trump Train as “the Japanese soldiers found on the islands years after World War II and did not know, did not realize that the war was over and they had lost.”
- Fox News tweeted on May 31 that syndicated talk show host and Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham said “The never-Trumpers have been defeated. They just don’t know it yet, apparently.”
This treatment of #NeverTrump conservatives is reminiscent of how the Tea Party was handled by the mainstream media. First, it was ignored completely. Then, when hundreds of thousands of people descended on Washington, D.C. in 2009 and the media was forced to acknowledge the movement, the Tea Party was bashed as “racist” and as bunch of “domestic terrorists.”
Attempting the “#NeverTrump Twitter experiment” at various times this past week confirmed that not only is #NeverTrump always trending (just not on the list,) but it oftentimes blows away the hashtag with the number one position on the Twitter trend list.
According to Twitter’s FAQs about trends, the algorithm used to define the trends on Twitter “identifies topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis…” so it should be noted that the absence of #NeverTrump is not necessarily some evil Twitter plot to suppress conservatives. Furthermore, the author tried this experiment with #NeverTrump, but did not check other terms or phrases that may also be blowing away the competition.
This is how the non-scientific experiment was conducted:
1.) I took a screenshot of the United States Trends list and noted the time. For example, this is the Twitter Trends screenshot captured May 30, 10:24 PM Central Time:
2.) I waited until time had passed and took a screenshot of the results. In this case, about an hour and a half had passed. The following screenshot was captured May 30, 11:52 PM Central Time:
As you can see (apologize for the poor quality of the screenshot), the number one hashtag #Game7 had 200 new results, the number two hashtag #Roots had 180 results and the number three hashtag, #TheBachelorette had 200 results.
But two hashtags that were not listed on the U.S. Twitter Trends list had more results than even the number one hashtag. #ChickenTrump had 204 new results while #NeverTrump had a whopping 465 new results!
Here is a screenshot of the entire page:
The author tried the same experiment several more times with the same result. Here is an example from today:
Trends captured 12:04 PM Central Time on June 1, 2016
Results captured at 12:37 PM Central Time on June 1, 2016:
- #GlobalRunningDay: 210 new results
- #WednesdayWisdom: 208 new results
- #WhenIWasYoung: 215 new results
- #NeverTrump (not listed): 352 new results
Screenshot:
Other days and times have produced similar results and the author would be happy to provide them upon request, although anyone can conduct this experiment on their own. It would be interesting to discover the actual list of trending hashtags in the United States.
The bottom line is that like the Tea Party, the establishment Republicans and the mainstream media will do everything they can to diminish, marginalize and vilify the #NeverTrump movement, which is much bigger than they want you to believe. The truth is that principled conservatives are the biggest threat to those who seek to maintain the money and the favors offered by big government and their enablers.
Cross-posted at Broadside News
