Donald Trump is known for his hasty (and frequent) posts on social media.
He regularly crashes on Truth Social in the middle of the night, shares a string of AI nonsense posts on the platform, and threatens those he disapproves of with lengthy messages.
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But in recent months, a select few posts have ended with an oddly formal phrase: “Thank you for your interest in this matter.”
“This is really different from how he typically posts,” said Claire Robertson, an assistant professor of psychology at Colby College in Maine who focuses on political polarization and extremism.
Robertson added that Trump often uses moral and emotional words (such as “scam” and “corruption”) in his posts that quickly draw attention to himself. “He’s still using a lot of the morally emotive language that we know is going to get attention,” Robertson said of Trump’s social posts as a whole.
She added that negative and moralistic language attracts engagement, clicks and shares in a “really polarizing way.” “Once something has more of a moral sentiment, it tends to spread within a political group rather than between political groups.” In other words, these types of posts are designed to outrage people and are often shared with equally outraged people.
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“But ‘Thank you for your attention’ isn’t negative or moralistic, so it’s particularly interesting,” Robertson said. “It’s not consistent with some established findings. It’s just weirdly formal.”
Experts say the phrase and Trump’s use of it can say something about the president and his communication style.
“Thank you for your attention” is a phrase that expresses control over the situation and its message.
The language is certainly formal; it reads like an email from HR or a warning from an attorney. But experts say there may be more to it than that.
“From a clinical perspective, the repeated use of the phrase ‘Thank you for your attention’ may be more than just a formality. It carries connotations of control and authority,” says holistic psychotherapist Shenikka Moore-Clarke.
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“We know Trump is very consciously trying to control situations,” Robertson noted, noting that he has also been known to “control” handshakes by pulling on people and slightly knocking them off balance.
Phrases like this may also create expectations about how people should engage with these social media posts. For some people, “Language often becomes a way of managing image and power and positioning oneself as one who sets the terms of participation,” Moore-Clark explains.
This may lead to a specific type of power dynamic that determines ““How people should relate to what a person says,” Moore-Clark said.
Robertson adds that this is also a bit hypothetical. “Assuming everyone gives that attention,” Robertson said.
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There is no room to question what the poster is saying. “It is [subtle] But it can be understood as control,” Moore-Clark explains.
Additionally, while the sentence contains the word “thank you,” experts question whether it’s true. “It’s more about command than gratitude,” Moore-Clark said. “It’s a way of asserting Control, implying that the reader should obey or pay attention. “
In recent months, Donald Trump has frequently closed social media posts with “Thank you for your attention,” an approach that experts say is controlling language. Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images
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This sentence commands strength.
Moore-Clark said the post that ended with “Thank you for your interest” was distinct from other posts on Trump’s social media.
“It…presents itself as ‘This is an important thing you need to pay attention to,’ so it [kind of] draws you in,” Moore-Clark explains.
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She added that, more or less, he was telling readers that other people needed to think it was important, too.“I see [the] This feels strategic, giving his followers more trust in him as a source of power, even if what he says is untrue or harmful to certain groups. “
It tends to emphasize more serious posts.
“Through language, sometimes we have certain clues… I don’t know if it’s a scientific term, but often they can be called ‘microcultures,’ where something means something different in a particular place,” Robertson explained. For example, your community might refer to a nearby restaurant as a “corner spot” rather than its actual name.
In this case, if you follow Trump’s social media religiously, “posts that end with ‘Thank you for looking at this’ may come across as more serious than some of his other posts. That could be a signal that this is something policy-related,” Robertson said, as an example.
Indeed, this formal ending doesn’t often accompany Trump posting memes criticizing other politicians or calling for purchases of his son’s new book.
Instead, “Thank you for your interest” ends a post in which Trump shares something he’s done or something he’s ordered others to do, whether it’s announcing Kathy Means as surgeon general or instructing Democrats to “open up government.”
Trump may have done this intentionally, but he may also have done so unintentionally. “We use language cues all the time without us even realizing it,” Robertson added. Has anyone ever pointed out that you only call your partner a certain nickname when you’re angry? This is an example.
Robertson says, at least, he doesn’t use “thank you” very often, which makes this fairly new social media closing all the more fascinating.
The original version of this story was published earlier on The Huffington Post.
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