Trump's Presidential Twitter Library Lands In Los Angeles—Gold Toilet and All
Walking into the exhibit, it's easy to become overwhelmed by everything Donald J. Trump. His thoughts, his feelings, his tiny hands, but most of all, his infamous Twitter account. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is hosting two-weekend exhibition, closing June 17, in West Hollywood dedicated to President Trump's most active channel of communication: Twitter.
The museum takes you through Trump's chaotic whirlwind of a presidency, showcasing his best (or should we say worst?) moments thus far as the leader of the free world. A timeline from his first tweet to his most recent, including a live feed of his tweet deck, aligns the room, while his most viral tweets adorn the walls in majestic gold frames. One can peruse a map of all the places Trump has tweeted about, which rests below an adaptation of Washington Crossing the Delaware, with Trump as Washington, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka and Vice President Mike Pence, among others of the Trump troupe.
A piece of the exhibit unique to the Los Angeles location is "11 Minutes," a short film on display in a garden at the back of the building, accompanied by a memorial for Trump's deleted tweets. On a large stone slab, one can read the handful of tweets that Trump has deleted throughout the years, while watching a satirical film about the 11 minutes that Trump's Twitter was offline.
One of the most entertaining pieces of the exhibit is "Verified Survivors." Using headphones, you can listen to multiple celebrities speaking intimately about how it felt to have Trump personally attack them on the popular social media channel. Kathy Griffin was upset that she wasn't given a catchy nickname like "Ginger Kathy," as many of Trump's targets often receive; Seth Myers sarcastically commented on the president's obvious compassion in calling him "awkward," and that since the attack, Myer's knew Trump was "his president."
There are also opportunities for museum-goers to interact with Trump and his tweets. You can enter your name and have a nickname generated á la Trump, you can create your own unique Trump tweet using the president's most common Twitter vocabulary, and you can sit in the Oval Office itself (or at least a replica), complete with a golden toilet as your chair. You're then given a crisis situation about which you must tweet from the john—common practice for the commander in chief, according to SNL.
Desi Lydic, Daily Show correspondent, spoke to BTI about the importance of the exhibit.
"For me, this presidency is somewhat depressing," Desi said. "It is not great for humanity, [but] I suppose it's beneficial for comedy. I think for me, comedy can be incredibly cathartic and therapeutic, so I look at something like [the Twitter library] and go 'Okay, let's go all the way and commit to this idea and see what kind of fun we can have'."
Trump's "classic move" on Twitter, Desi says, is "to divert attention elsewhere and blame other people for the very thing that he’s responsible for. It's such a great tactic that seems to be working really well."
Of all the hysterically embarrassing Trump tweets, Desi gave a spotlight to the ever-intriguing "covfefe" tweet from May of 2017.
"It's in the gold frame…'Despite the constant negative press covfefe.' Covfefe is my favorite."
The museum is on display for one more weekend, June 15-17 from 10 am - 10 pm at 631 Robertson Blvd. in West Hollywood and free to the public.