WASHINGTON, June 3. /TASS/. Since his inauguration on January 20, US President Donald Trump has shared more than 2,200 posts on his Truth Social network, which is over three times higher than during the same period in his first presidential term in 2017-2021, the Washington Post (WP) said.
During his first term, Trump used the X social network, known as Twitter at the time, but his account was blocked by the network’s administration following the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. In 2022, American entrepreneur Elon Musk, who became X’s new owner, lifted the restriction but by then, Trump was already using his own Truth Social network where he continues to post almost daily.
The newspaper reiterated that the US president began to use social networks for communication with his supporters more than 10 years ago, but now his activity has significantly increased. If in 2017, the president posted 14 tweets per day at the most, then during his second presidential term, this number is nearly 10 times greater - 138 posts on Truth Social.
According to an anonymous source in the White House, Trump has a small team of assistants "to keep his online operation running." For instance, it includes Dan Scavino, presidential adviser and White House deputy chief of staff, and aide Natalie Harp. A documentary series about Trump captured the US president "dictating Truth Social posts as Harp and Scavino typed away." Other White House staffers are responsible for the president’s official pages on social networks. "Senior staffers, however, sometimes call Trump when they have a more formal statement they would like him to promote," the Washington Post noted.
That said, the US president frequently posts on his own, "surprising his staff in the middle of the night and early in the morning, when he is watching the news on TV," the newspaper’s source said. According to the newspaper, Trump supporters believe that he is focusing his energy on Truth Social now because he owns this social network and stands to gain from its success. His stake in the parent company is valued at more than $2 billion. Additionally, the platform lets him set the agenda for media outlets and social networks because his posts are picked up by his followers and reposted to other venues, said Claire Wardle, an associate professor at Cornell University who studies social media.
"It’s a very different information environment than in 2017, incredibly splintered but just as powerful," the scholar said. "It’s easy to dismiss it if you don’t spend time on Truth Social. But for the people who do, they absolutely are seeing those posts and seeing the same talking points amplified and repeated on all the pages and [newsletters] and podcasts they look at and listen to and subscribe to." "He wouldn’t just be on Truth Social if he wasn’t making an impact," Wardle explained.