This Is What It's Like To Use Twitter Like Trump

If you're a political progressive who's been hoping that somehow something will transpire to keep real estate magnate and Electoral College victor Donald Trump out of the White House, it's long past time to wake up to the jarring reality. Namely, Trump is the president-elect, and barring something unprecedented happening, he'll be taking over in January. And if you're the sort of person who likes to be prepared, maybe you want to get inside the guy's head right now. Well, here's one way ― want to see Twitter through Donald Trump's eyes?

Full and enthusiastic credit for this idea goes to Robert Mackey, formerly of the New York Times, and currently a senior writer for the Intercept. On Nov. 30, Mackey tweeted out a link to what ought to be one of the must-have Twitter lists for anyone hoping to understand Trump's political information intake ― and thus, in all likelihood, what he'll be tweeting about ― over the next four years.

In short, it's a Twitter list comprised strictly of the 40 accounts that Trump personally follows, a window into how the world looks when the President-elect picks up his phone and refreshes his timeline. Suffice it to say, it's a decidedly insular view of the world, comprised mostly of Trump's family, some of his staffers, and a slew of right-wing talking points, Fox News personalities, and varying degrees of misinformation.

In addition to following his immediate family and a bunch of his corporate accounts, like the Trump Organization, Trump Waikiki, Trump Golf, and Trump National Doral, the president-elect seems to get the bulk of his Twitter news from sources like the Drudge Report, Fox Nation, and Fox News personalities like Eric Bolling, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. Rabidly anti-immigrant commentator Ann Coulter is also one of his 40 follows, as well as the controversy-courting former CNN host Piers Morgan, well known as a Trump sycophant.

The only two MSNBC personalities Trump follows, unsurprisingly, are Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, both of whom were heavily criticized for their coziness with the president-elect throughout the campaign. One notable omission: Trump doesn't follow the fringe conspiracy theory site Infowars, nor its bombastic founder Alex Jones, a leading font of far-right fake news. But it's very clear that he has picked up information from there in the past ― he once retweeted one of Jones' editors, and even appeared on the notorious 9/11 and Sandy Hook truther's show, praising his "amazing reputation," among other things.

In short, when you put all this together, what you get is a... well, rather telling understanding of what's happening in the world. If you're curious to see for yourself, it's really best to just check Mackey's list ― you can even subscribe to it yourself, so that the next time Trump tweets something inflammatory or wildly untrue, you can check to see if he picked it up from a source in his feed.