Nearly a decade after his twitchy Twitter fingers helped him shock the world by defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump’s social media habit is playing an even larger role in his messaging and governing during the opening months of his second term.
Since returning to the White House on Jan. 20, Trump has taken to the social media site he owns, Truth Social, for a total of 2,145 original posts, which he has used to announce hirings and firings, launch an unprovoked trade war with China (and most of the world), roll out policy changes and threaten friend and foe alike, often with the curt sign-off: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Over his first 100 days, The Independent found he had posted to his site more than 1,600 times, or at least 15 times a day on average through the end of April with the most frequent subject being illegal immigration.
A Washington Post review of his Truth Social output that includes his “retruths” — reposts of content posted by another user on the platform — brings his total to 2,262 posts and reposts starting from the day he was sworn in until this past Sunday.
That’s more than three times the number of posts to his former favorite platform, Twitter (now known as X), during the same time period in his first term, for an average of 17 posts to his Truth Social account on any given day.
Some of his posts are mundane announcements that any of a wide range of Republicans running for offices at every level have received his “complete and total endorsement” in whatever race they are running.
Others, like those marking holidays, have become a genre of their own in which he marks the holiday but then launches into a screed against various enemies, real or perceived.
He most recently added to the ranks of this set of posts last week on Memorial Day with a 172-word, all caps rant: “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane.”
But it’s the reposts that often raise eyebrows as Trump shares content from any of his millions of followers on the Truth Social platform, some of which crosses into the conspiratorially bizarre.
In one repost last weekend, he shared a post from a follower who claimed that his successor turned predecessor, former president Joe Biden, had actually been replaced by a “soulless mindless” robot clone because the real Biden — according to the user — was put to death in 2020.
The White House declined to say whether Trump believes Biden, who hosted him at the White House after he won the 2024 election and accompanied him to his swearing-in at the Capitol this past January, was actually a robot clone.
Instead, a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, claimed that Trump’s social media use makes him “the most transparent president in history and is meeting the American people where they are to directly communicate his policies, message, and important announcements.”
Trump’s prolific use of his Truth Social site, on which he boasts more than 10 million followers, theoretically lacks the reach of his previous favorite megaphone on X (formerly Twitter) which can immediately broadcast his missives to 104 million people — approximately 20 million more than the 80 million-plus who followed him when he was banned from the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a riotous mob of his supporters.
Though he was reinstated to the platform after it was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022, he has continued to post first on Truth Social, possibly due to contractual obligations that require him to post to Truth Social before any other platform.
In total, his posts to X since returning to the White House number around 100, and those are largely copied from his Truth Social output.
According to a White House official who spoke to The Independent on condition of anonymity, Trump’s social media posting is still managed in part by Dan Scavino, the longtime aide who has worked for the president since he was hired as the manager of his Westchester, New York golf club in 2008 but first encountered him years before as a golf caddy at another one of his courses.
Scavino, who ended Trump’s first term as deputy chief of staff for communications, still holds a position as an assistant to the president with the title of deputy White House chief of staff. And he still has access to Trump’s Truth Social and other social media accounts.
But the days where he was the main author of Trump’s posts are over. Now, Scavino works with other loyal staffers, including Natalie Harp, the former right-wing broadcaster who sits close to the Oval Office as one of Trump’s closest aides.
Trump’s been filmed dictating posts to both advisers, but the official stressed that many of Trump’s most bombastic posts are from the president’s own thumbs, particularly ones that come late at night or early in the morning as he is watching television.
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