Donald Trump celebrated Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter by posting on his own, very similar social media platform, Truth Social.
"TRUTH SOCIAL has become somewhat of a phenomena. Last week it had bigger numbers than all other platforms, including TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest. It also looks and works better to my eye. I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country," Mr Trump said. "Twitter must now work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly. It will be much smaller, but better. I LOVE TRUTH!"
Mr Musk immediately fired the site’s CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and its policy head, Vijaya Gadde, who was responsible for the permanent ban on Mr Trump’s account after the Capitol riot. Follow along with The Independent’s live coverage of Mr Musk’s Twitter acquisition for updates throughout the day.
It was that ban that ultimately resulted in Truth Social’s existence. After he was booted off the site for violating its “glorification of violence” policies, Mr Trump began issuing official-looking missives from Mar-a-Lago, which were inevitably saved as screenshots and spread around the rest of the internet.
His former spokesperson, Jason Miller, launched his own social media platform, Gettr, which — like Parler and Gab and Frank Speech before it — claimed it would not only be a beacon of "free speech" on the internet, but it would be controlled by former Trump staffers.
Unfortunately for the site, Mr Trump never seemed to take interest and instead waited for the release of his Twitter-clone, Truth Social. The site’s UI includes a "like" button, a "reTruth" button with the same circular arrows that Twitter’s retweet button has, and a reply button, complete with comic book dialog bubble.
With Mr Musk in charge and the executive who banned him fired, many conservatives on Twitter celebrated what they hoped would be the former president’s return to the site. That dream is still unrealised as of Friday morning.
And it may remain that way; Mr Trump previously told Fox News that he had no intentions to return to Twitter, even if he was given the opportunity.
"I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth," Mr Trump said. "I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth."
So, if Mr Trump is faithful to word, the former president won’t be returning to Twitter anytime soon. Instead he appears ready to continue battling with the site by boosting his own platform.
Though it’s unclear what Mr Trump means when he cites Truth Social’s "numbers," it’s likely he meant app downloads and not average daily users.
Based on data collected by Forbes, Truth Social has approximately 2 million monthly active users, though the site did see a boost in popularity following the FBI’s raid at Mar-a-Lago.
