Wielding Twitter like a weapon: Here's what was really going on when Trump's most outrageous tweet storms took place

Trump's ability to drive news cycles from his Twitter account has remained a fixture of his presidency, but sometimes the sheer volume itself becomes the story.AP Photo/Evan Vucci

• President Donald Trump's Twitter use has gotten to the point where the social media company has, for the first time, marked two of his tweets with a fact check for the public.
• His use of the platform to communicate with his fans and detractors is unprecedented. Trump's tweets from the White House have the ability to not only drive news cycles but spark policy and force the hands of his opponents.
• Back on Mother's Day, President Trump came close to breaking his all-time record for most tweets in a day.
• The president's Twitter use is often understood as trying to create a distraction or push for a shift in messaging when he doesn't like his press coverage. He also tweets a lot about ratings.
• Using a database logging all of Trump's tweets, Business Insider analyzed how Trump wields tweets in order to control the narrative.

Donald Trump was a prolific Twitter user well before entering politics.

Now that he's president, his tweets can move markets, force the hands of world leaders, and scramble his own administration into action.

Over the last week, Trump has used his influence on Twitter to hammer out false accusations that a cable news host murdered a former staffer and to call the legitimacy of mail-in voting into question. And for the first time, Twitter slapped a fact check on two of Trump's tweets that attempted to undermine public confidence in voting by mail. The president has since issued a "Clean up your act, NOW!!!!" directive to social media platforms.

Trump is truly the first social media president, and it's hard to imagine what his time in office might look like if Twitter wasn't at his disposal. The platform allows him to shift the story, control the narrative, and speak directly to his constituents in an unfettered, unfiltered way that thrills fans and pains critics.

The volume — and volatility — of Trump's tweets tell a bigger story than the day-to-day controversy over their content. In Trump's world, you distract from one problem — impeachment, poor ratings, the Mueller Report — by creating another (on Twitter).

Here are Trump's record days on Twitter, and why he may have been running rampant over your timeline, according to the Factba.se database: