Former President Donald Trump made his long-awaited return to Twitter/X on Monday night in a glitchy, three-hour livestreamed conversation with the social network’s new owner, Elon Musk.
On the same day, shares of rival social platform Truth Social, partly owned by Trump himself, fell 5%. The company’s shares have fallen nearly 60% so far this year, largely due to questions about its low revenue. The company reported quarterly earnings last week that revenue was down 30% year over year to $836,900, and that it had posted a total quarterly loss of $16.4 million.
But the recent share price decline could also reflect investor concerns that if the former president resumes regular posting on the site now known as X, it could pose problems for Truth Social, where Trump remains the main event.
Former President Donald Trump holds a rally in Minden, Nevada, on Oct. 8, 2022, and Elon Musk holds a rally in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 12, 2021. The two took part in a two-hour debate hosted by X on Monday, during which the Tesla CEO reiterated his support for Trump in the 2024 election. More photos from The Associated Press
“I think it makes sense for Trump to keep both. [accounts]”If you want to reach more voters, you’re better off doing it on a bigger platform,” Eric Dahan, founder of marketing firm Mighty Joy, told Newsweek. “It’s not an either/or thing, and it doesn’t have to be an either/or thing.”
Trump has long been known as one of Twitter’s earliest public adopters and a prolific tweeter, a role he continued throughout his time in the White House, where he pushed the social media platform’s boundaries with some 26,000 tweets during his presidency that ranged from harmless spelling mistakes to sudden threats of nuclear war.
An excerpt from President Donald Trump’s Twitter account during his presidency. An excerpt from President Donald Trump’s Twitter account during his presidency. @realDonaldTrump/X
He was banned from Twitter and Facebook after being accused of inciting the January 6th riot at the Capitol.
“From 2015 until Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump was defined by Twitter,” Dan Pfeiffer, an adviser to former President Barack Obama, wrote in a newsletter Tuesday morning. “He used it to get his message out, to blitz his rivals, and to control all four corners of the political debate.”
Trump eventually founded a Twitter rival, Truth Social, that was meant to counter big tech companies’ perceived bias against conservatives.
“This was started in response to censorship, specifically the censorship of Trump and other conservative voices,” Dahan said.
But shortly after Truth Social was incorporated, Musk personally bought Twitter for $44 billion, reinstating Trump’s account in the process, leaving many to wonder when the @realDonaldTrump account would return, though Trump was initially reluctant to take the opportunity to return to his old base.
“Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X with the goal of making it a truly free speech platform, or a censorship-free platform like that, and I think it achieved the same goal as Truth Social,” Dahan said.
So if Trump starts posting regularly on X, as he currently does, what does that mean for Truth Social?
Dahan noted that X has “much greater distribution power” and doesn’t carry “the political stigma that Truth Social does.” Strategically, he told Newsweek, it “makes a lot more sense” for any politician to spend their time on a platform with a wider reach.
Pfeiffer agrees, writing that “Trump and Musk need each other.”
Prior to Monday, Trump’s X account had seen little activity beyond a single post of his mugshot from his arrest, but in the past 48 hours, Trump has posted 12 times to promote his interview with Musk and share messages related to his campaign.
Jake Schneider, emergency operations director for the Republican National Committee, praised Trump for “gaining nearly 1 million new followers in just X posts, his first in almost a year.”
Dahan said that even with these numbers, he doesn’t think Trump will completely abandon TruthSocial for X anytime soon.
“Truth Social is more of a place for him to talk and interact with his core fanbase,” Dahan said. “Truth can evolve to fill in some of the gaps that maybe X hasn’t filled.”
With an order of magnitude more users than Truth Social, X remains uniquely capable of amplifying Trump’s message.
“Look, I love Trump on Twitter,” an anonymous Trump aide told The Bulwark, “but one of the benefits of Truth Social was that no one was on it, Trump could basically say whatever he wanted, and a lot of the problematic content went unseen. Now we’re back to the old days.”
Dahan suggested that targeting Truth Social for mobilization and get-out-the-vote efforts could still be effective, given its audience of ardent Trump supporters.
“They’re more engaged. They’re more likely to show up to events than the average X follower,” he said. “X is built around features. Truth is really built around community… I think that’s what’s going to continue to evolve.”
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