But how strong is the noise? Many Republicans still seem to hold onto every word Mr. Trump said. But others say his voice nearly passed out without Twitter or the presidency, much like Alpha, the terrible Doberman pinscher in the movie “Up,” gets ridiculous when his electronic voice fails and he is forced to speak to the Mickey Mouse-like voice from someone who has inhaled too much helium.
“He does not behave logically and disciplined to carry out a plan,” said Republican anti-Trump attorney George Conway of the former president. “Instead, he tries to scream as loudly as he can, but the problem is that he’s in the basement and it’s like a mouse squeak.”
Of course, not everyone agrees. Even some people who aren’t fans of Mr. Trump’s language say the Twitter ban was simple censorship that stole an important political voice from the country.
Ronald Johnson, a 63-year-old Wisconsin retailer who voted for Mr. Trump in November, said Twitter stupidly became the bad guy in the fight.
“What it does is make people more sympathetic to the idea that there is someone here who is being molested by big tech,” Johnson said. While he does not miss the former president’s outrageous language, it is a mistake to deprive his supporters of the opportunity to hear what he has to say.
And many Trump fans miss him desperately, also because their identity is so closely linked to his.
Last month, a plaintive tweet from former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who lamented Mr. Trump’s absence from the platform, was “liked” more than 66,000 times. It also inspired a return to the kind of brawl that Mr. Trump provoked on Twitter when outraged anti-Trumpers came in to let Mr. Giuliani know exactly what to do with his opinion.
It is precisely this kind of thing – the punch-counterpunch between right and left, the rapid escalation (or shift) in attribution and outrage that caused Mr. Trump so often – that Mr. Cavalli, a former sports journalist, caused Associate Athletic Director at Stanford University to leave Twitter just before the election. He’d spent an hour or two a day on the platform, often going mad posting sarcastic replies to the President’s tweets.