Trump's VP tweet makes history

Through a terrible twist of fate, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made history in more ways than one when he announced his vice presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Twitter.

Twitter confirmed to Mashable on Friday that announcing such a pick on the platform is, in fact, a first.

Trump has used Twitter as his go-to platform for almost every thought, retort, CAPITAL-FILLED RANT and announcement. He plays the social media platform like Charlie Daniels plays the fiddle. Yet, Trump initially planned to reveal Pence as his pick in a Friday morning press conference. It was too important an announcement, it seemed, for a mere tweet.

Then the horror of Nice, France happened. Thursday night, a possible terrorist plowed through a crowd enjoying Bastille Day fireworks, killing roughly 80 people and injuring more than 200.

Trump showed rare restraint in his tweeted response to the attack and after declaring his support for victims, announced that his scheduled press conference and VP announcement would be postponed.

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It seemed like a good call at the time, though one could argue that the attack and his VP announcement are not mutually exclusive events. After all, Trump's running mate choice directly impacts those people who will be running the U.S. government next year -- the very people who will have to deal with and respond to these kinds of attacks around the world.

This is not a criticism, just an observation that while there are certainly things you do not want to tweet or do in the real world in light of horrors happening around the globe, announcing national leadership choices isn't necessarily one of them.

How to announce

With that choice made, though, Trump faced a dilemma: The world was rapidly learning about his choice of Pence, even without him making a public announcement.

Pence had to officially withdraw from the race for reelection to his current office by noon Friday. Indiana law prevented him from running for both the VP job and the governorship at the same time. By missing that deadline, Pence essentially confirmed what many already believed: He is the VP choice.

In the meantime, a nightmare scenario was quickly building for GOP strategists, who had already worried publicly that Trump would announce his VP pick on Twitter. Their fear, apparently, was that Trump would go rogue and do so without warning.

However, that has seemed less likely over the past month as Trump has worked harder to court more traditional Republican support and, ever the showman, might have been looking forward to the spotlight of the Republican National Convention stage and making the announcement there next week.

Obviously the Pence scenario preempted that possibility, but there was still supposed to be a live press conference. The Twitter announcement may not have caught the world off-guard, but it did seem to leave most of his digital team flat-footed.

We got a tweet and another bit of Twitter history was made, by someone who makes a habit of making, if not history, Twitter news.

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Whether or not Trump had a choice, there's no getting around the diminishing effect of tweeting a U.S. presidential election running mate choice. It's unlikely Trump's opponent, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will face such a choice, but even if she does, will she make the same choice? Smart money says no, no she won't.

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