Joe Keohane is a writer based in New York and was formerly an editor at Esquire.

On May 4, 2009, @realDonaldTrump toddled out into our world. Back then, Twitter was still seen as a buggy curiosity making grandiose promises that no one took seriously. So too was Donald Trump. When the two met, there were no sparks, at least none right away. @realDonaldTrump emitted two polite toot-toots of self-promotion, and then rested for four days.

“Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman as he presents the Top Ten List tonight!”


“Donald Trump will be appearing on The View tomorrow morning to discuss Celebrity Apprentice and his new book Think Like a Champion!”

Not until about a week later—May 12, to be exact—did the world get a glimpse of what @realDonaldTrump would eventually turn into. That’s when it tweeted:

“My persona will never be that of a wallflower - I’d rather build walls than cling to them” --Donald J. Trump

This was a new one: using your personal Twitter feed to quote yourself, and then actually signing it, lest there be any confusion about the source. You could chalk it up to one of those misunderstandings we all have when adopting a new technology. Or you could see it as a flash of vision. While many of us were still making fun of Twitter for being a place where bores talked about their lunches, Trump saw it as something more. He saw it as a way to erect new monuments to Donald J. Trump.

Today, @realDonaldTrump is a force, a newsmaker, an agitator, an American political phenomenon that combines the high profile of a presidential candidate with the reach and velocity of social media. It has more than 7.5 million followers. It has tweeted more than 31,000 times. It is a thing.

But who is @realDonaldTrump really? And what can we learn about the real Donald Trump from @realDonaldTrump? To find out, I scrubbed Twitter for every tweet I could pull from its seven-year feed—an imperfect compendium, but more than 13,000 in total—and spent three full days in the company of @realDonaldTrump. Day and night. Thousands of boasts and insults; all the crowing, cajoling, whining and threatening; every single “Sad!” The experience was by turns amusing, exhausting, infuriating, compelling and sometimes even weirdly poignant.

Trump was older than 60 when he started tweeting, a celebrity with a public personality that had been formed for years. Not so @realDonaldTrump. The Twitter feed The Donald made in his image has had an arc, a growth curve. At first, @realDonaldTrump was fairly edgeless, a chirpy self-promoter and dispenser of warmed-over inspirational quotes. There were flashes, of course, clues as to where Trump would go, politically, tonally, emotionally. Later, as @realDonaldTrump matured and grew in reach, I began to think of my companion as an insane child king, like Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones. But that was later. First, it had to discover the one thing it was unequivocally, freakishly good at.

II.

To look back on the first two years of @realDonaldTrump is to encounter a lost Eden—before the birth certificate and #LittleMarco and Heidi Cruz and “BE CAREFUL!,” back when Megyn Kelly was but a glimmer in Donald Trump’s bile duct. The feed in those years was cheerfully utilitarian, largely apolitical, concerned with media appearances, philanthropy, hotels, golf, and sundry Trump book and TV projects. It offered “one and all” a happy Thanksgiving, and wished followers “a wonderful holiday” and “happy holiday season” at Christmas—liberal courtesies that would later be pointedly withheld.

New Window What is it about @realDonaldTrump that has the Internet—or at least 7.5 million of us—rapt? We analyzed Donald Trump’s tweets going back to the beginning, in 2009, and it turns out there’s a lot you can learn about the man, too. | Data Analysis by David Lazer and Oren Tsur/Graphics by Nicolas Rapp

In its early life, @realDonaldTrump existed as equal parts salesman and motivational speaker. It encouraged followers to “know when to call it quits and when to keep moving forward,” to “think like champions” and to “always know you could be on the precipice of something great,” often signing them “Donald J. Trump.” It was a benevolent little thing, and only once did it require tribute, directing followers to wish “Donald” a happy birthday on Facebook, and then graciously thanking them for their kindness.

It wasn’t until 2011 that @realDonaldTrump got up on its hind legs and began to yawp. Yes, there were still the familiar warmed-over mantras, Apprentice talk and plugs for products like the now-defunct Trump mattress and the now-defunct TrumpNetwork.com, a vitamin company that he tweeted would help “people make lots of $$” and which was later denounced as a pyramid scheme. But it was that year, as the man behind the feed began his widely mocked flirtation with a 2012 presidential run, that @realDonaldTrump turned its gimlet eye to politics. It was an interest that happened to dovetail with Trump’s new book:

First there was the Declaration of Independence, then there was the Constitution. Now there is #TimeToGetTough. Available today. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2011

The entry into politics brought out a new side of @realDonaldTrump. It became a geyser of climate change denial and Obama panic—the president hated America, Israel, capitalism, Christmas and so forth. Trump called for “a President who can negotiate better deals for the American People.” And he started tweeting his soon-to-be-familiar complaints of wrongdoing and malfeasance by various foreign nations: Chinese currency manipulation; an OPEC conspiracy to hobble the U.S. with high oil prices.

That mix of soapboxing and hucksterism also meant the world would henceforth be treated to some unprecedented Twitter juxtapositions: like, “In his own words, @BarackObama ‘was born in Kenya, and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,’” followed minutes later by “Everybody is raving about the Trump Home Mattress.” Clearly, @realDonaldTrump believes it’s called retail politics for a reason.

Most important, though, this was the year that Trump discovered what many had by then realized: Twitter is amazing for insults.

The first target besides Obama, in October 2011, was liberal former Fox News commentator Bob Beckel, who @realDonaldTrump said “was not born with much of a brain.” Then it was Rosie O’Donnell (“a true loser”) and Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts (“looked disgusting--nipples protruding--in his blue shirt before Congress. Very very disrespectful”).

Back then, Twitter was a place where college kids could become embroiled in flame wars, but a billionaire supposedly interested in occupying the highest office in the world using tweets to trash-talk? That was novel. And it was entertaining. It helped burnish the image Trump had crafted on his Apprentice shows as a shouty, politically incorrect, tell-it-like-it-is character.

But the insults, as they went on, also began to reveal something deeper. You might think “unvarnished” implies some sort of underlying consistency, a solid core of opinion. Not in this case. Anyone actually tracking the targets of @realDonaldTrump would have quickly seen that his straight-shooting persona rested on constantly shifting sands.

Take, for instance, the matter of @realDonaldTrump, Time magazine and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

I knew last year that @TIME Magazine lost all credibility when they didn't include me in their Top 100... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2012





The Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People is a joke and stunt of a magazine that will, like Newsweek,soon be dead. Bad list! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2013





Angela Merkel is doing a fantastic job as the Chancellor of Germany. Youth unemployment is at a record low & she has a budget surplus. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 3, 2013

I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015

Remember, get TIME magazine! I am on the cover. Take it out in 4 years and read it again! Just watch... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2016



The pattern played out time and again, like that kid in the schoolyard who always acted like your friend until you said the wrong thing—and then, look out. On April 20, 2015, @realDonaldTrump tweeted at the Weekly Standard: “I know your business is failing but you should try to get writers far better than @stephenfhayes.” Then he made an offer to editor Bill Kristol on July 23, 2015: “Bill, your small and slightly failing magazine will be a giant success when you finally back Trump. Country will soar!” When Kristol said on August 25, 2015, that Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, under fire from Trump, should stop being so thin-skinned, Trump tweeted, “Thank you @BillKristol. I am going to Make America Great Again!” But when Kristol poked fun at Trump two months later, Trump branded him “Dopey @BillKristol, who has lost all credibility with so many dumb statements and picks.”





The MO of @realDonaldTrump, it quickly becomes evident, is not to engage with an argument, but to attack the person making it. Ad hominem attacks are nothing new, but even by political standards, @realDonaldTrump is all over the place. August 3, 2015: “Thank you @krauthammer for your nice comments on @oreillyfactor. A lot of progress is being made!” Then, four days later: “The hatred that clown @krauthammer has for me is unbelievable.” May 12, 2015: “One of the dumber and least respected of the political pundits is Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post @TheFix. Moron hates my poll numbers.” October 17, 2015, after a favorable post: “Thank you @thefix for your very honest commentary.” March 6, 2013: “John Heilemann, the lightweight reporter begging to be [email protected] joe, looks like a timebomb waiting to explode-he’s a nervous and sad mess!” June 24, 2015: “I am really beginning to respect Mark Halperin and John Heilemann as political reporters - they truly get why ‘Trump’ poll numbers are high.”

If you think of Twitter as just a publicity tool, sure, all this could well be a conscious carrot-and-stick scheme: using it as a rapid-response instrument to swat away criticisms, while trying to influence what people say via attacks and compliments. It certainly works out that way sometimes. But spend enough time with @realDonaldTrump, and this quality starts to feel like something else: a pathology that just happens to function like strategy.

Curious about just what kind of pathology it might be, I called John Gartner, a psychologist who specializes in personality disorder. Gartner believes that what we can see in @realDonaldTrump is a mix of dysfunctional traits. There’s hypergraphia—“a tendency to just write and write and write”—which is common among people with hypomania, a more functional form of mania that often involves high energy, inflated self-esteem, ambition, aggression and a tendency, says Gartner, to “say whatever they think—whatever occurs to them, they just say it.”

5/14/2009: “Strive for wholeness and keep your sense of wonder intact.” --Donald J. Trump 9/19/2011: I am increasingly concerned with the UN’s ploy against @Israel this coming week and will monitor all events closely from Australia. 5/14/2012: The TIME Magazine cover showing late age breast feeding is disgusting--sad what TIME did to get noticed. @TIME 8/21/2012: Amazing--both Transformers & Dark Knight Rises featured Trump properties and each grossed over $1B. Just coincidence. 12/19/2012: Okay, I think I’m going to do it—I’ll open the Miss Universe Pageant as Santa tonight at 8 pm on NBC 1/14/2013: I am a handwriting analyst. Jack Lew’s handwriting shows, while strange, that he is very secretive—not necessarily a bad thing. 4/26/2013: Ignorance is inexcusable; it’s the surest way to fail. No acceptable reason exists for not being well informed. 6/18/2013: Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend? 7/21/2013: Also, The Donald J. Trump Signature mattress from SERTA is doing record business-call Serta and see why! 7/24/2013: More and more reporters are using the word TRUMP when referring to winning--just used on Bloomberg News. Gee, I wonder why? 12/8/2013: P.S. - There is also something really good to say about humility. Being confident and humble is a great combination, maybe the best of all! 12/12/2013: How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived 1/11/2014: In politics, and sometimes in life, FRIENDS COME AND GO, BUT ENEMIES ACCUMULATE! 4/21/2015: [email protected] You stated that I started “relentlessly tweeting like a 14-year-old girl...” Horrible insult to women. Resign now or later! 1/11/2016: [email protected] is retiring their elephants-- the circus will never be the same.

But those traits, which are frequently found in entrepreneurs, are amplified in @realDonaldTrump’s case by “malignant narcissism,” which “combines narcissism with paranoia, antisocial traits and a propensity toward violence.” The malignant narcissist believes, “If you’re with me, you’re great because you’re part of my greatness; and if you’re not with me, you’re evil and you need to be destroyed.” As Gartner explains, “That personality style was actually developed by analysts around World War II, to explain the personality of Hitler.”

III.

It’s not overstating things to say that by now insulting people is @realDonaldTrump’s raison d’être. It will be what Trump himself is best remembered for (unless, you know, he wins). Yes, the feed still shills for what’s left of Trump commercial endeavors, now that Macy’s, NBC, Perfumania, Serta and others have severed ties. And yes, it still boasts compulsively. But mostly, what @realDonaldTrump has been best known for over the past five years is flaming people. In lieu of any real campaign surrogates, @realDonaldTrump has become the actual Donald Trump’s attack dog, his oppo squad. Call it a strategy, or merely a tactic, but it works. @realDonaldTrump insults someone, his followers amplify it, and then the media ignore what’s-his-name Kasich for another five minutes.

You would think that if a person did something over and over again for five years, he would become genuinely good at it. But in @realDonaldTrump’s case, the jabs have improved not at all from the early days. They are reflexive and one-note, with a decided lack of proportionality: the work less of a wit than of a schoolyard mean girl. Critics are “dumb,” “boring,” “losers,” “haters,” “dopes,” “unattractive,” nervous, genetically defective —@realDonaldTrump has an abiding interest in genes—or some combination thereof. Unless the critic is black, in which case he or she almost unfailingly will be dubbed “racist.” As the campaign has roared on, it has taken on a more manic edge, accusing foes of lying, likening them to dogs and, as Trump’s candidacy achieved its full lunatic flower, issuing not-so-veiled threats against people.

These put-downs are rarely actually funny. What’s funny is that they come from a man who circles the globe in a gold-plated plane. The sheer high-low spectacle seldom fails to provoke a flurry of retweets and media coverage.

This, too, may be a canny communications strategy. It couples social media’s speed and reach with the actual media’s weakness for conflict to suck oxygen away from other candidates. And it neutralizes every criticism

before it has a chance to find purchase in the minds of supporters. Why spend time crafting the perfect political response when you can just call someone “dopey” and get the same payout?

But as someone whose eyesight has been diminished and equilibrium upset by the extent of this undertaking, I have another theory.

The more I read, the more I came to believe there is a one-to-one connection between @realDonaldTrump’s boasts and his insults. The things @realDonaldTrump hits others for are the things the real man is most defensive about: his intelligence, his success, his appearance, his body (be it in terms of stamina or various forms of endowment). By the end of my Trump Twitter immersion, I was sure that the reason @realDonaldTrump uses these insults is that he thinks they are the most hurtful things you can possibly say about another person. And that’s because they are the most hurtful things you can say about Donald J. Trump.

Illustration by Bigshot Toyworks

And boy, is he easily hurt. It’s not just Graydon Carter’s “short-fingered vulgarian” jab, a wound that has been bleeding for nearly 30 years. It’s everything. To spend time with @realDonaldTrump is to be treated to an endless litany of grievances about every perceived slight and unfairness. There’s the usual complaining about the media, which never ceases, and his individual opponents, who are, depending on what they most recently said or did, weaklings or bullies, puppets or conspirators. There is the fact that the small-c catholic holiday wishes are now barbed Merry Christmases (and, memorably, that 9/11 wish) aimed at “losers” and “haters.” There was that whole year, from spring of 2013 to spring of 2014, when he habitually tangled with trolls (“Where do you live, moron”), before he sort of realized that a Great Man should probably have better things to do with his time than pick fights with random nobodies on Twitter, and just got down to retweeting praise. There is the fact that he simply will not shut up about Rosie O’Donnell.

When people do attack him with a modicum of skill, you begin to see the limitations of @realDonaldTrump’s approach to verbal combat. Modern Family writer-producer Danny Zuker attacked him in April 2013. A sampling:

I've been warning about China since as early as the 80’s. No one wanted to listen. Now our country is in real trouble. #TimetoGetTough — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2013

.@realDonaldTrump You've always been tough on China, sir. Particularly the children who make your shitty clothes. pic.twitter.com/6dp2omL1hZ — Danny Zuker (@DannyZuker) June 12, 2013





I can't resist hitting lightweight @DannyZuker verbally when he starts up because he is just.so pathetic and easy (stupid)! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2013

Just tried watching Modern Family - written by a moron, really boring. Writer has the mind of a very dumb and backward child. Sorry Danny! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2013

I was just told by a television pro thay @DannyZucker is one of the truly dumbest guys in the business-he's obsessed with T-so many flops! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2013



Indeed, Trump’s reaction to Zuker’s zings was so excessive that it caused one follower to ask a legitimate question: “Just out of curiosity, what makes you care so much about what they think?” @realDonaldTrump huffed, rather lamely, “I study cowards and stupid people.”

The 2016 race has seen him act out the same impulse on a vastly larger stage. After Megyn Kelly gave him some mild trouble in Republican debates, @realDonaldTrump reacted like a spurned lover. “[email protected] spent a big part of her show talking about other shows spending so much time on me,” he tweeted on December 9 of last year. “Really weird, she’s being driven crazy!” Then, on January 11: “[email protected] recently said that she can’t be wooed by Trump. She is so average in every way, who the hell wants to woo her!” And two weeks later:

I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2016

Of course, she wasn’t the only one singled out for criticizing him. Ohio Governor John Kasich:

Watch Kasich squirm --- if he is not truthful in his negative ads I will sue him just for fun! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2015

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul:

Truly weird Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain. He was terrible at DEBATE! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2015

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio:



Can you believe the worst Mayor in the U.S., & probably the worst Mayor in the history of #NYC, @BilldeBlasio, just called me a blow hard! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2015

The fire is turned on enemies and former friends alike. Mitt Romney, whom @realDonaldTrump warmly endorsed in 2012, came out against Trump this year and got an immediate personal smackdown: “When Mitt Romney asked me for my endorsement last time around, he was so awkward and goofy that we all should have known he could not win!” And, of course, the Twitter feud between Trump and the Cruz family will go down in political history.





There are also blow-ups over what @realDonaldTrump views as insufficient praise. “Just finished reading a poorly written & very boring book on the General Motors Building by Vicky Ward,” @realDonaldTrump tweeted. “Waste of time!” Why? Because he was in it, and as Trump himself said later, “It wasn’t bad about me, but it should have been great about me.” @realDonaldTrump severed ties with Celebrity Apprentice vet Arsenio Hall for not praising him in an online Q&A, and then, when Hall’s show was canceled later, used it as further evidence of the Trump-centric model of the universe: “[I]t had to happen. People that are disloyal, in the long run, never make it.” At one point, after one of his few steadfast friends, Piers Morgan, tweeted that “Bob Costas is one of the smartest people I’ve interviewed,” @realDonaldTrump shot back, “But you told me I was the smartest (by far)!”

IV.

Studies have shown that social media can amplify both insecurity and narcissism, leading to a warped sense of self-esteem in its users. It can also rather brutally reveal the depths of a user’s emotional neediness, because it’s so irresistibly easy to trawl for praise and reassurance. It’s well known that Trump’s appetite for praise is prodigious. In the past, he had to work to get it. Events, TV ratings, philanthropy, bugle renditions of “Hail to the Chief” and various other forms of real-life tribute. But with the advent of @realDonaldTrump, real Trump finally found a way to trawl for it in suitably Trumpian quantities.

In January 2011, @realDonaldTrump touted the formation of an “independent” site ShouldTrumpRun.com, which had a Twitter feed of its own proclaiming, “We need to convince Donald Trump to run for President in 2012.” @realDonaldTrump looked favorably upon this development, tweeting, “THe people at ShouldTrumpRun.com have got it right!” Followers responded enthusiastically. (That ShouldTrumpRun.com was actually cofounded by an executive at the Trump Organization was beside the point.)

Later, touting an appearance in a Comedy Central roast, he tweeted, “Keep talking about me: use #TrumpRoast to tweet about how good I look on @ComedyCentral tonight.” The appeals get no less transparent over time: “Tell me, which is ‘cooler’—my induction into the @WWE Hall of Fame or my Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?” And: “My daughter Ivanka thinks I should run for President. Maybe I should listen.”

The bragging, of course, has continued apace alongside the manufactured cheers. Indeed, to read Trump’s catalogue of praise for himself is to venture deep inside a very fragile ego, where self-love runs the gamut from the laughably childish (“Move slowly, carefully --- and then strike like the fastest animal on the planet!”) to kind of heartbreaking (“‘I’ve never seen anything like it, everything he touches turns to gold!’ So nice, a quote by Fred C.Trump about his son Donald (me!).”). All come accompanied by the usual grand Trumpian buffet of exaggeration, hucksterism, magical thinking and arrant nonsense—select lines from which, I came to realize late one delirious evening, can be arranged into exquisitely desolate little poems:

Many are saying I’m the best 140 character writer in the world.

My I.Q. is one of the highest.

I am the BEST builder.

I am a handwriting analyst.

Today is my birthday.

But nothing Trump could come up with on his own as far as self-promotion is even close to what @realDonaldTrump’s followers say about him, the kind of lavish (or slavish) praise that he would, and does, retweet in reams, even when it comes from suspected white supremacists. Gartner assured me that this practice is not the measure of The Donald’s insecurity, but quite the opposite: “It’s not that [narcissists] need praise to feel reassured that they’re great. It’s that their greatness demands praise.” The problem, he says, is there’s never enough—“it’s sort of a bottomless pit.” Not that this has deterred @realDonaldTrump’s followers from trying to fill it. These proclamations too, I realized, can be arranged into poems, albeit ones that may as well have been written by a North Korean state media functionary:

Trump would be the greatest president.

He will never be beaten by anyone!

You look FORCEFUL. … That’s what we, America’s women, admire about you.

Your wisdom surpasses all representing this country.

You were created for our generation.

Nobody will laugh at us when you’re in charge.

V.

So what is this creature I just spent three days of my life with? What can I say about my time with @realDonaldTrump?

For one thing, I think this tweet made it all worthwhile:

Ringling Brothers is phasing out their elephants. I,for one, will never go again. They probably used the animal rights stuff to reduce costs — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2015

For another, I can say that the experience helped us achieve common ground: Now we both hate Politico for what it has done to us.

I wonder why somebody doesn't do something about the clowns @politico and their totally dishonest reporting. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2015

But what of @realDonaldTrump itself? Despite all its warrior posturing and claims to indomitable strength and fortitude, I know exactly what it is, and there’s just one name for it: @realDonaldTrump is a cry-bully. Abusive, needy, sulky and thin-skinned. In reflexively retweeting ugly and factually baseless tweets that dovetail with its beliefs, it stands as a living, breathing object lesson on the perils of confirmation bias. While promising to “make better deals” for America, it fails to convince on any points other than its profound weakness for flattery and utter inability to take criticism. It doesn’t so much say what it believes as it does say whatever pops into its head. That’s not political incorrectness; it’s just a plain old-fashioned lack of restraint.

But then, @realDonaldTrump suffers from a condition usually fatal for politicians: profound identity confusion. It is conflicted about pretty much everything from name-calling and deal-making to Twitter trolling itself.

@realDonaldTrump lectures John Kerry after his Iran nuclear accord:



John Kerry is openly celebrating the tenuous nuclear deal with Iran. Great dealmakers do not celebrate deals,they just go on to the next one — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 25, 2013



But of course it celebrates its own deals constantly. @realDonaldTrump insists:

Wow, I’m at 2,200,000 followers but I’d love to get rid of the haters & losers—they’re such a waste of time! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2013



But it needs them—really needs them:

It makes me feel so good to hit "sleazebags" back -- much better than seeing a psychiatrist (which I never have!) — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2012



@realDonaldTrump even urges people:

Entrepreneurs: Be tough, be smart, be personable, but don't take things personally. That's good business. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2015



And then proudly cops to treating everything personally:

When someone attacks me, I always attack back...except 100x more. This has nothing to do with a tirade but rather, a way of life! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2012

Or: “… BUT REMEMBER, DUMMY, HE HITS BACK REALLY HARD!”

So, yes, I now know what I need to know about @realDonaldTrump. It is a personality disorder incarnate. It cannot be altered or cured. (“Malignant narcissism is an untreatable disorder,” Gartner says.) Just as relevant to our current political situation, @realDonaldTrump is, if not the substance of the man behind it, which is unknowable from this distance, then certainly the spirit and maybe even the very core of his campaign. In any normal election cycle, this sort of social media performance would already have resulted in quick banishment to the slag heap. But here we are.

So what of @realDonaldTrump is signal and what is noise? “The dealmaker,” @realDonaldTrump noted just days before the 2012 election, “is cunning, secretive, and never settles for less than what he wants.”