Vocativ – President Donald Trump’s surprise firing of former FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday night has a lot of people on Twitter talking about dictatorships, democracy and impeachment.
Mentions of “Trump” and the word “dictator” or “democracy” spiked in the hours immediately following the news of Comey’s firing. Between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, there were 2,577 tweets containing the word “dictator” and 3,342 tweets containing the word “democracy.” That’s a 1,443 percent and 925 percent increase from such mentions, respectively, during that same hour a week before.
The word “impeach” was tweeted 64,329 times between Tuesday at 5 p.m. EDT and Wednesday at 6 a.m. EDT — the 12 hours following the announcement of Comey’s dismissal — and “Trump” or “Comey” were included in 25,744 of those tweets. Posts featuring “resign” with “Trump” or “Comey” was tweeted 15,639 times during that time period.
FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian pic.twitter.com/PatArKOZlk
— RichardNixonLibrary (@NixonLibrary) May 9, 2017
There were also many comparisons to former President Richard Nixon, who had the special prosecutor investigating him fired. (Though, as the Nixon Presidential Library helpfully tweeted, Nixon did not fire the director of the FBI.) There were 75,387 mentions of “Nixon” and “Trump” covering the 12 hours after Comey was fired.
