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McClatchy Washington Bureau
McClatchy Washington Bureau
National
Vera Bergengruen

Americans to Trump: Please delete your account

WASHINGTON _ Fifty-nine percent of voters think Donald Trump should delete his Twitter account, according to a national poll from Quinnipiac University released Tuesday.

In the two weeks since the election, Trump has alternated between tweeting formal announcements regarding the transition and continuing to denounce perceived attacks, from the cast of the musical "Hamilton" to "Saturday Night Live" to The New York Times.

On Tuesday, Trump fired off a string of tweets starting at 6 a.m., saying he had canceled a planned meeting with the newspaper's executives, reporters and columnists and complaining about their "nasty tone." The meeting was quickly rescheduled later that morning.

"Voters tell President-elect Donald Trump, 'You've got the job. Now be a leader not a tweeter,'" said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

Trump used the platform to great effect during his presidential campaign, bypassing the media to get his often brash comments directly to the public. In his interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" after the election, he called Twitter "a great form of communication."

"I'm going to be very restrained," he said when he was asked about using Twitter as president. "If I use it at all, I'm going to be very restrained."

The official Twitter account of the presidency, @POTUS, will be handed over to Trump after his inauguration. President Barack Obama's tweets will be archived.

Most voters, 61 percent, said that Trump will act better as president than he did during the campaign, while 11 percent said they think he will act worse and 25 percent did not expect his behavior to change in the White House.

In the same poll, voters said 59-37 percent that they are "optimistic about the next four years with Donald Trump as president," even though they also think 52-42 percent that he is not honest.

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