Like most presidential candidates heated phase So far in the election year, former President Donald Trump has taken a distinct tonal shift on his Truth Social profile, posting increasingly vulgar, misogynistic and vindictive posts.
Just this week, he retweeted messages calling for political opponents to be jailed, calling for the return of “public military tribunals” for people like former President Barack Obama, and making graphic sex jokes about Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrat Hillary. Clinton, her opponent 2016. The repost of the sexual joke has now been removed from Trump’s profile.
But you will only see this if you are a Truth Social user. On other major platforms like X and TikTok, Trump has maintained a more even tone intended for consumption by a wider swath of the American electorate.
Truth Social has long been a safe haven for Trump allies and aides, a place where they can rely on their baseless claims of election fraud and their quest for revenge, where these messages can be seen and republished or “suggested.” Trump himself has more limited reach than the mainstream platforms, putting things out of sight and out of mind for the vast majority of Americans.
On Truth Social, Trump has been able to draw the ire of fans who post more extreme conspiracy theories and calls to action, while maintaining a more manicured presence on larger platforms like X.
On Wednesday, Trump made and shared a particularly extreme series of posts on Truth.
“How to actually fix the system,” it read, with photoshopped images of Hillary Clinton, President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former public health official Anthony Fauci, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Harris sitting in orange. overalls behind prison bars.
“Charge the rebellion of the unelected J6 committee,” reads one, followed by “represent the truth if you want to shut them down.”
In the other, Trump, sitting next to Obama, said, “All roads lead to Obama.” If you want public military tribunals, tell the truth.”
And one includes a screenshot from X of Harris and Clinton’s response to a photo of oral sex “having different effects on both their careers.”
Trump regularly used the platform “Truth Social” to smear enemies and pursue various legal cases against him, which a New York judge held him in contempt of court partly based on his posts for breaking the traffic rule. In March, he shared a video A photo of Biden strapped to the back of a pickup truck. And in July, he posted another call for a “televised military tribunal” for former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and a quote from Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War broke out. which one said: “Now there are only two parties: traitors and patriots.”
But the sexual nature of the attack on Harris has opened a new frontier, with all indications that Harris is more competitive against Trump than Biden.
Answering a question about the sexual post about Clinton and Harris on CNN, Trump’s senior adviser Jason Miller assessed the discussion about this post as a “distraction” and tried to compare it to the criticism that Trump “has faced from Democrats since he got off the escalator. ” in 2015 when he announced his first candidacy for the presidency.
“I didn’t discuss it with the president, I don’t know if the president saw the comment written there or just the picture. This is not what I asked for.” Miller said on CNN Thursday.
Not having seen or discussed the specific posts with the former president is a defense the Trump campaign has used when it comes to his more extreme posts on Truth Social, and has been linked to GOP efforts to sideline Trump’s statements on Twitter. was in office by uses the same claim.
This social media silo also made it easier for the general public to disconnect from some of the former president’s more vociferous posts. Instead of X’s post garnering hundreds of thousands of likes, Trump’s Truth Social account, which sometimes sees more than a hundred posts in a day, is often unanimously applauded by several thousand supporters on the app.
Former Florida GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo told MSNBC on Thursday that if these highly incriminating posts reach a wider audience, it could pose a threat to Trump with a wider electorate.
“This attack is so well beneath the surface of a campaign, especially a presidential campaign, that it makes sense for the Harris campaign to ignore it and let him speak for himself,” Curbelo said. “Ultimately, it hurts him with the swing voters who will decide this election.”
Trump’s posts on Truth Social are quite different from his posts on other social media platforms.
His most controversial posts on Truth Social don’t appear on his X account, which has more than 90 million followers. Instead, he recently unveiled a new crypto project, shared campaign ads and graphics, stepped up media appearances and other projects, while criticizing Harris and the Justice Department after a federal grand jury returned it. It replaces the indictment against Trump for election interference In response to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.
TikTok, which Trump joined in June after trying to ban the app while in office, has similarly posted relatively tame content by comparison. The former president railed against inflation in a series of live-cam videos for his 10.7 million viewers. “A Safe Nation Again” and “repeated expressions includingtoo big for the device” and “Make America Great Again”.
His YouTube channelwhich has 3.2 million subscribers, similarly posts attack ads, Trump’s appearances on Fox news and speeches.
Trump, by comparison, has 7.6 million followers on Truth Social, where his posts can generate several thousand reposts and tens of thousands of interactions.
Trump’s presidency has been defined in part by his almost constant presence at X. He often sparred with his opponents at all hours of the day and night, and made headlines by announcing new policies or making sudden personnel changes.
But after spending much of the end of the 2020 election cycle and the months after, repeatedly making false claims that the election was stolen from him, he banned from the platformthen Twitter, January 6, 2021, two days after the Capitol riot. The company said it had “permanently suspended” Trump, citing a “risk of further inciting violence.”
Trump retreated to the Truth Social he gave Launched in February 2022and has since made it his digital mainstay. After some initial growth, there is a program struggled to attract usersand the company behind the app saw its share price rise decline in recent weeks.
Elon Musk He restored Trump’s account After acquiring the platform in November 2022.