Donald Trump, Poet? A Collection of Poems About Trump is on Sale at the RNC

If there’s one thing Donald Trump’s supporters and detractors can agree on, it’s perhaps this: The former president is a master tweeter. One fan believes Trump’s musings on X, formerly Twitter, are worthy of a book of poetry.

Among the Trump memorabilia on sale at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, one item stands out: a first-edition book titled “Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump.”

Gregory Woodman of Portland, Oregon, presented the book — a hardcover with gold lettering embossed on the cover — to potential customers at the RNC.

“He’s an incredible poet,” Woodman said. He spent months combing through online archives of all of Trump’s tweets to create this collection.

Trump, the poet?

The 373-page book draws on Trump’s tweets from 2009 to 2019, Woodman said in an interview with The Columbian after the book’s launch in 2020. On the page, Trump’s tweets are designed to mimic the abstract style of poets like E.E. Cummings.

Asked whether Trump’s tweets should be considered poetry, he explained: “It’s a matter of interpretation. It’s a case study of what it means to be human… It’s a test of your emotional and guttural responses.”

Here are some examples: “Entrepreneurs: It is often in your best interest to be underestimated.”

Another said: “I hate the USA Today redesign / the logo is horrible.”

Those looking for more recent tweets from the former president are in luck. “We have a Volume II coming out,” Woodman informed a potential buyer at the RNC.

Trump’s Tweets Inspire a New Kind of Presidential Library

This isn’t the first time Trump’s tweets have been turned into art. In 2019, The Daily Show created Donald J. Trump’s Presidential Twitter Library.

Similar to the official presidential libraries of his predecessors, the traveling exhibit featured moments from Trump’s time in office: framed copies of scathing tweets, medals for his biggest Twitter battles and a replica of Trump holding a phone in the air, mid-tweet.

A banner above the exhibit featured a tweet from Trump dated July 21, 2014: “A lot of people have said I’m the best writer of 140-character sentences in the world.”

Perhaps this will appear in Volume II of Woodman’s “Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump.”

Melissa Cruz is an election reporter focusing on voter access issues for the USA TODAY Network. You can reach her at [email protected] or on X, formerly Twitter, at @MelissaWrites22.