It’s been a rough week to be a prominent Trump supporter. Your die-hard fan base committed insurrection against the government, your leader was stripped of the greatest online megaphone in human history, and all your alternative options for posting are getting swiftly shut down.
And to add insult to injury, as Twitter culls QAnon believers and neo-Nazis upset about censorship flee the site, your follower counts are dropping steadily.
Sure, there might terrorists plotting inside your party, threatening the unity and sanctity of American democracy like no time since the Civil War, but it appears the greatest concern for many in and around the Trump administration is that they have fewer people to reply to their tweets.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who continues to baselessly blame the Capitol violence on mythical antifa soldiers, lost nearly 40,000 followers.
QAnon-supporting Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said she had 30,000 followers gone.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complained about the follower counts of a number of Republicans doing down in a graphic.
He noted that he, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ala.) lost followers during the last couple of days. Sarah Huckabee Sanders also complained, saying she lost 50,000. Others did as well.
Of course, in the wake of the Capitol riots, Twitter cracked down on a number of QAnon bots and promoters, and in the wake of President Donald Trump being banned, a number of right-wingers claimed to be ditching the site.
So as many people on Twitter noted: If you’re losing those kinds of followers, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
While clearly not the most pressing matter of the day, it does appear to be the only thing Republicans want to talk about.
Update 11:02am CT: In a statement, Twitter responded to the accusations of follower losses, saying it was a standard audit.