March 25, 2020

I Made a Trump Astrology Twitter Bot, and It’s Scaring Me How Funny and Accurate It Is

Of course he’s a Gemini.

Mother Jones illustration; Ron Sachs/CNP via Zuma, Andy Holmes/Unsplash, Reign Abarintos/Unsplash

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Donald Trump is a man of conflict and contradiction—a Gemini with a Leo Rising and a Sagittarius Moon, to be precise. I have no idea what that means but, according to Cosmopolitan, Geminis are meant to be “fast, witty and super into communications.” Insider is blunter: Geminis are two-faced liars and poor listeners who constantly repeat themselves.

Can astrology decode the day-to-day behavior of our Gemini-in-chief? No, of course it can’t, but I’ve made a Trump horoscope Twitter bot anyway because why the hell not. Follow along: @trumpstrology.

Here’s what I did: I coded a bot that tweets Gemini horoscopes from an open-source dataset, paired alongside a top-trending news story of the day. 

Over the past few weeks, I let my little bot run autonomously behind a locked account while I finessed the code. Since late December, it’s been ingesting viral news articles and matching horoscopes in an attempt to explain all sorts of things: Trump’s bizarre impeachment-acquittal speech, his dismissals of the coronavirus emergency, his hatred of energy-efficient light bulbs.

Some of the @trumpstrology horoscopes track alongside real-life events with supernatural perfection. Many other pairings are so-so. And then you get the misfires. To find their meaning, it takes a bit of work to stitch together some dissonant data points—which often reveal the most poignant prophecies. (Just like astrology itself!)

Yet each one of those misfires serves as a reminder—that summoning the infinite power of the cosmos can still be insufficient to explain whatever the hell our president is doing half the time.

To see what the stars—and Trump—will bring tomorrow, follow @trumpstrology on Twitter.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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