Rihanna, Cruz, Nixon and insults: The curious case of Donald Trump’s Twitter likes

Donald Trump’s rare Twitter likes are a peculiar collection. The US president has only liked a handful of tweets ever, but he recently gave his first love heart in years to a tweet complimenting Rihanna’s work-life balance.

The tweet that got the elusive Trump seal of approval was one from writer Heban Nigatu which calls Rihanna a “queen.” The message featured a quote from an interview with the singer in which she talks about the importance of having a work-life balance. Trump is known to be a big fan of taking time out of his presidential schedule for “executive time,” so it should come as no surprise that he approves of Rihanna’s philosophy.

While Trump’s account shows he has liked seven tweets, only three are now visible, and the Rihanna tweet is not one of them. The president appears to later ‘un-like’ some of the tweets he’d liked. Another instance of this seemingly took place in January 2018 when Trump hearted a tweet from Shazam –wishing Katy Perry a happy birthday– more than two months after Shazam had tweeted it.

It’s difficult to determine what compels Trump to dole out his infrequent likes. The last tweet he liked, and didn’t subsequently unlike, was a 2017 reply under one of his own tweets that said, “please, after several typo’s, he’s just not Presidential material.”

Bizarrely, another one of his likes is one that criticizes him, reading: “For one so self-posessed, you aren’t very self-aware. You’ve hurt the GOP as much as anybody.” Perhaps he thought the tweeter was insulting someone else.

Perhaps the most peculiar of all Trump’s likes is one from 2013 that links to a satirical article about him commenting on Senator Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate. The tweet features a photo of Trump with a speech bubble which now says: “Nixon was a quitter! I’ve done twice the bad stuff he did, but you won’t see me resigning”.

While Trump did like the tweet the site now regularly changes the photo to show the US president saying a range of unlikely things including an announcement that he was selling California to Mexico and claiming that tax fraud was cool in the 80s and 90s.

It might be time for Donald to hit ‘unlike’ on that one, too.

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