Tens of thousands of people were unable to access the network – the Guardian was finally allowed in on 5 March – and by early April the Truth Social app was the 355th most popular on Apple devices. If that lack of interaction hasn’t helped Truth Social, neither did the botched rollout on 21 February. Trump may have insisted that he will snub Twitter and stick with Truth Social, but his commitment to his own platform has so far been tepid at best – Trump has posted on Truth Social just once.
#TRUMP TWITTER FREE#
“If he wants to intervene on behalf of a candidate he has now endorsed in the midterm elections, being able to reach that number of people with messages supporting those candidates is a way of essentially getting free advertising time to reach people who are more likely to vote as a result of getting a signal from Donald Trump,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, told Time. He has reportedly expressed discontent with how Truth Social has performed – “What the fuck is going on,” the Daily Beast reported Trump as asking aides in March – and to return to relevance, and to win back the spotlight he craves, the former president might need Twitter. The twice-impeached former commander-in-chief is not known for his consistency, however. Trump himself has said he won’t be back, telling Fox News: “I am going to be staying on Truth.” “Every single one of them told us that they hoped the former president stays the hell away from Twitter,” Politico reported. After news of Musk’s takeover, news website Politico contacted several top Republican members and aides to gauge reaction to a potential Trump Twitter return. “There’s a strong case that having Trump back on Twitter would help Democrats win votes by forcing Republicans off-message, reminding swing voters how much they disliked the former president, and driving up progressive turnout,” said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media watchdog.
Should Trump do so, however, it will represent an admission that Truth Social, the former president’s own ailing social media effort, released earlier this year as a supposed alternative to Twitter, has failed – adding the fledgling platform to a long list of Trump’s business missteps.īut beyond the embarrassment, a return to Twitter, and to Trump firing out messages attacking Democrats and Republicans alike, could also be a dent to Republican chances in the November midterm elections. If Donald Trump, who was permanently suspended from Twitter in January 2020 due to the risk of him inciting violence, rejoins the platform then he will once again have access to a tool he has acknowledged helped him defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, taking back his ability to dictate the news cycle and communicate with the 88 million followers that were snatched away in an instant.
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