I doubt I'd be here, but we're in for social media, to be honest with you.

The thing to understand about a lot of these tweets, the strategy behind it is that the controversy that follows,

and often it's a controversy that's about him saying things that aren't true.

It's a controversy that always posits him as the guy fighting for the little guy against the elite.

He tries to talk about issues that are very complex.

He uses it to mostly attack people, insult criticize people.

The most dangerous thing he does is conduct diplomacy on Twitter.

Hello and welcome to Trumpcast, I'm Virginia Heffernin.

Talking Trump means, of course, talking politics.

A new cycle poisoning means we all need to discharge the toxicity by trying to get a picture of politics and Trump's.

America.

But there's more to the story of our time than politics, whatever that is, and today we're talking about tech.

Specifically, how social media made Trump, addled our language and cognition, and landed us in this hellscape.

Peter Singer, together with Emerson Brooking, is the author of a like war, a book out this month that lays out the politics, battlegrounds, and stratospheric high stakes of social media.

For the book, Peter interviewed subjects as weird and diverse as reality show, Heel Spencer Pratt, to National Security Heel, Mike Flynn.

The book is an amazing achievement and I'm happy to have Peter here.

We'll be back with Peter Singer in just a minute, but first, the most bullied person in the whole world.

And now an excerpt from Melania Trump's bullying diary.

August 17th, Dear Bullying Diary.

Today was a very hard day of being bullied. On my way to the Rose Garden for an important press conference, Steven Miller came up to me and said,

Melania, what is that on your blouse? He then pointed to an area on my shirt. When I looked down to see where he pointing, he raised his finger, touched my nose, and make a booping noise.

He laughed and I felt sad.

...