Clinton aide: Distracting Trump ‘personally’ with social media is a victory

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s top digital operative said on Tuesday that she sees it as a victory if they can use content online to “personally” distract GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“If we can distract him personally for 15 minutes a day, I’ll take that as a win,” said Jenna Lowenstein, according to Morning Consult. “He’ll go on a rant on TV about something that took us an hour to make and he’s been thinking about it for 36 hours.”

{mosads}The comments came at an event sponsored by Politico at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Lowenstein said, however, that the bulk of the campaign’s efforts on Twitter were focused on persuading voters and making the campaign’s case.

Clinton’s campaign has been willing to engage directly with Trump on Twitter, despite the real estate developer’s aggressiveness on the platform and willingness to engage in tweet wars. Her campaign account made headlines last month when she tweeted at Trump: “Delete your account.”

“Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary,” Trump had tweeted before Clinton’s tweet. “He wants four more years of Obama — but nobody else does!”

Clinton’s campaign has built an aggressive digital team, with a chief technology officer who used to work for Google. Trump, meanwhile, has publicly downplayed the importance of data to his campaign and relies on a firm in Texas with little prior political experience.

In talking about the campaign’s digital strategy, Lowenstein also referenced a joke that originated with Twitter user Mark Hammer in June: “The genius of the Trump Clinton Twitter war of 2016 is that it consumes Trump’s every waking minute & Clinton doesn’t know it’s happening.”