After Trump Left, he Came Out: Trump’s First Murmur on Truth Social and the First GOP 2024 Presidential Debaton
On Thursday, the former president turned himself in at the Fulton County jail on over a dozen charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Trump has faced four separate criminal charges over the last five months, but the most recent one was his first mugshot. He made his first post on X in January of 2021.
The company’s former management permanently banned him from the platform on that day due to the risk of more violence after his supporters massed in the US capitol.
The social media platform that Trump created, Truth Social, was kicked off of several websites, but Trump implied he would stay with it. In typical Trumpian fashion, the businessman claimed that his platform was through the roof and doing great when the opposite was true.
Rolling Stone reported in January of this year that Trump didn’t want to renewed his exclusive contract with Truth Social, which was due to expire in June. Even still, he first posted the image of his mug shot on Truth Social earlier Thursday evening. Before that, he appeared in a video interview with Tucker Carlson on X that was timed to the first GOP 2024 presidential debate. After leaving the network, the host took his show to the platform.
Musk ran a poll asking if he should bring back Trump. The next day, he declared that he would do so based on the poll’s results. There were around 15 million responses, and of them 50 percent said yes and 48 percent said no. The former president did not think there was need for him to return when Truth Social was doing well, because he saw a lot of problems on the social networking site. He told his supporters to vote yes in the poll.
Musk brought back accounts belonging to conservative websites, including The Babylon Bee, before reinstating Trump’s account last year.
Trump was first indicted in April for alleged hush money payments he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. After leaving the Manhattan courthouse where he was arrested at the time, Trump’s 2024 campaign released a t-shirt featuring a fake mugshot, since a real one was not taken. The campaign quickly made a t-shirt with the words “NEVERSURRENDER!” after his mugshot was released.
Why Trump’s Twitter Follows the News Cycle: For Trump, X marks the spot for his social media return. Why that could really matter
Musk’s politics — and Twitter’s much larger audience than his own platform — are certainly likely reasons for Trump’s change of heart, especially as he tries to step on the gas in this Republican primary, needing to reach as many people as possible at the push of a button.
It’s just one more way that Trump, during this presidential campaign, has commanded the spotlight. On Wednesday, he chose not to attend the first GOP presidential debate. The interview with Tucker Carlson on X was supposed to counter the program.
Trump is the far-and-away frontrunner for the nomination again with less than five months to go until the Iowa caucuses. His lead in primary polls has ballooned by an average of 40 points with Ron DeSantis’ campaign on the decline.
It is important for Trump to be on X, if he does decide to post more regularly. Trump has millions of followers on his personal platform.
When Trump was on Twitter, he was able to regularly command the news cycle with controversial tweets, keeping his name in the discussion, for good or bad.
That’s not accurate when it comes to the public at large. Republicans continue to buy what he is selling, believing the now four indictments against him and 91 total counts in four different cases are all politically motivated.
Source: For Trump, X marks the spot for his social media return. Why that could really matter
Trump’s Twitter Twitter Return. Why does it Matter? An analysis of Musk’s comments on the alleged misconduct of the Senate Minority in South Carolina
The former governor of South Carolina was booed for saying that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”
Trump is viewed less favorably than President Biden. Majorities of independents say they “definitely” will not vote for Trump again, and a majority — 52% — of independents in the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll now say the believe Trump has done something illegal.
Since the first New York indictment there has been an increase of 11 points, related to Trump’s alleged affairs with women.
Unless something changes, the GOP is on a collision course with that reality and are about to find out if they can steer clear past the danger next year of losing yet another election in the Trump era.
Despite Twitter’s smaller audience than other platforms, it has had a wide reach with an influential group of users, so much so that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, created Threads, a Twitter replica.
In December, Musk mentioned Dr. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official, but also took a dig at trans activism.
“I have no reason for that,” Trump said in his video conference at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting. “There are a lot of problems in Twitter, you see what’s going on. The problems are terrible, however they may or may not make it. The engagements are not going well. And you have a lot of bots and you have a lot of fake accounts.”
Source: For Trump, X marks the spot for his social media return. Why that could really matter
The Growth of Threads Over the Last Two Million Users in a One-Particle Approximate Web Hosting System (Extended Abstract)
As of last year, his site had a mere 2 million active users. Threads surpassed 100 million users in a matter of weeks, and X, despite growth, still has an active monthly user base of 450 million.