On MSNBC Tuesday, Rolling Stone political reporter Asawin Suebsaeng explained how former President Donald Trump's social media network is only fanning the flames as Republicans rage against the FBI search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago to find missing classified documents.
Truth Social, said Suebsaeng, is being used to out the personal information of officials involved in the case — and their families.
"In 2016 we saw the Russians infiltrate our democracy targeting Black voters, and now Trump has engaged in these, you know, essentially Twitter wannabe platforms," said anchor Tiffany Cross. "I'm curious how you think that could be weaponized when it comes to misinformation."
"Well, you mentioned the term 'Twitter wannabe' earlier in terms of what Trump's attempt at building a MAGA social media — it's Truth Social, and at its very best form, currently, it's a Twitter wannabe," said Suebsaeng. "Unfortunately for Trump, nothing more so now in terms of how much of a player it's going to be in terms of radicalization, that depends on how much popularity it's going to gain and right now that's a little bit questionable."
"What we do know, in terms of the level of MAGA-related popularity that it does have, is that in recent days, ever since the FBI raid on Trump's home and private Florida club in Mar-a-Lago, Truth Social had become a haven in the way that other social media platforms and more shall we say mainstream social media platforms had not become for this type of doxxed information on not just the personnel, the magistrate who signed off on this and also their families," said Suebsaeng.
"As you pointed out in the intro, the school that one of the kids went to was bandied about there ... left up for days, and it was to the taken down until we reached out to Truth Social which, again, is under Trump's control since he's the head honcho. He's one of the founders. It's his company. They didn't take it down until after we reached out for comment and until after we published the story last night."
"To make sure we weren't being completely unfair, because there are a lot of things that happen on a lot of different social media platforms that aren't necessarily the fault of the people, shall we say, of the people who owned them, we did a quick search on Twitter," added Suebsaeng. "We did a search on Twitter, just a one-on-one comparison between Truth Social and Twitter.com and we couldn't find any of the same doxxed information we were describing earlier about the FBI personnel and their families, so take that for what you will."
