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Donald Trump is turning the schoolyard taunt into a political art form. … These aren’t gaffes or off-script asides. They are part of a strategy, people close to Mr. Trump say, of knocking his Republican presidential rivals off their game. That, at least for now, is getting him the attention and poll ratings he wants among voters looking for an antidote to the artifice of U.S. politics. … But the intensely personal nature of Mr. Trump’s insults, sometimes mocking his rivals by mimicking them, is startling even to those who have grown accustomed to the sometimes low levels of civility in politics today.
As politicians become increasingly comfortable with social media, they’ve also begun dabbling in its darker impulses, employing tweets and Facebook posts as bait in a partisan war of words. Yes, trolling—the act of gleefully using the Internet to intentionally provoke or anger someone—is fast becoming a substitute for political discourse in America.
