Donald Trump’s Twitter account is back on Twitter. But he still shouldn’t tweet, say some fans on Truth Social, the Twitter knockoff Trump founded after getting banned from the bird site in January 2021.
Trump’s account was reinstated on Twitter on Saturday after the site’s new owner, Elon Musk, conducted a Twitter poll in which 51.8 percent of respondents voted in favor of restoring the ex-president. Trump’s page had been indefinitely suspended for “risk of further incitement of violence” after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol. During his suspension, Trump launched Truth Social, a Twitter-looking platform that has become the exclusive publisher of his social media screeds.
Now that he’s allowed back on Twitter, some Truth Social users are fretting that they don’t want to share Trump’s attention.
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“Now that Trump is unbanned, should he get back on Twitter?” a right-wing vlogger asked in a Truth Social poll shortly after Trump’s Twitter account returned Saturday night.
As of Monday, most of the 400-plus respondents answered that they wanted Trump to return to his old posting grounds—unsurprising, given that Trump has mourned his lost Twitter account and even filed a lawsuit to get it back.
But a significant segment of voters, 36 percent, said Trump should scorn Twitter.
“HELL FUCKING NO!” one voter wrote in the comments. “TRUTH SOCIAL 100%”
“I say HELL NO,” another commenter agreed. Another person urged Trump not to rejoin Twitter because the government could supposedly spy on him there.
Those sentiments were common on Truth Social, which currently holds the dubious distinction of being Trump’s only social media page. Since setting up his Truth account earlier this year, the former president has elevated posts from the site’s fringe users, including “re-Truthing” posts about the QAnon conspiracy theory, which calls for a wave of cleansing violence against Trump’s political foes.
Even some posts that celebrated Trump’s Twitter reinstatement received replies encouraging him not to tweet. “President Trump stay exclusive on Truth Social!” one Truth Social user implored in response to former Trump staffer Seb Gorka, who encouraged Trump to “get busy” on Twitter.
But if Trump is mulling a return to his old platform, he’s playing hard to get. Asked on Saturday whether he would take up his old @, Trump suggested his loyalty lay with his own, troubled social media site.
“[Musk] did put up a poll and I hear it’s very overwhelming, very strong,” Trump told reporters. “But I have something called Trump—if you look, it’s Trump-owned, but it’s really fantastic, Truth Social. And Truth Social is through the roof. It’s through the roof. It’s doing phenomenally well. The press hates to talk about it but it’s doing phenomenally well. I think engagement is much better than it is with Twitter and I’ll be saying that but I hear we’re getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it. They have a lot of problems at Twitter. You see what’s going on. It may make it, it may not make it but the problems are incredible, the engagements are negative, and you have a lot of bots and you have a lot of fake accounts, which I think they should get on but Truth Social has taken the place for a lot of people and I don’t see them going back onto Twitter.”
Trump has an agreement, valid through July 2023, not to post the same messages on Twitter and Truth Social at the same time.
“President Trump has agreed to first channel any and all social media communications and posts coming from his personal profile to the Truth Social platform before posting that same social media communication and/or post to any other social media platform that is not Truth Social (collectively, ‘Non-TMTG Social Media’) until the expiration of ‘DJT/TMTG Social Media 6-Hour Exclusive,’” the agreement reads.
He can post the same message on Twitter after six hours, or post the same message simultaneously as long as it “specifically relates to political messaging, political fundraising or get-out-the vote efforts.”
Some Truth Social users encouraged Trump to use Twitter, but only as a means to prop up Truth Social.
“Prediction,” wrote one Truth Social user with 52,000 followers and “QAnon” in their username, “Trump comes back to twitter he will only tweet once, and it will be: ‘You can follow me on Truth Social!’”
The theory is popular on Trump’s site; many prominent users have suggested Trump only use Twitter to link back to his Truth posts. But another cohort viewed Trump’s reinstatement as part of a prophecy.
“Only for ONE tweet,” one user wrote, adding that Trump should post “‘My Fellow Americans, The Storm Is Upon Us.’”
It was one of at least four such comments, just in the replies to the Truth Social poll on Trump’s return. Elsewhere across the site, other users expressed the same wish.
QAnon followers falsely believe in an event called “the Storm, in which Trump will expose his enemies as satanic pedophiles/cannibals and have them rounded up for execution. Their conspiracy theory is based on a 2017 post by the anonymous 4chan user “Q,” who wrote “Look to Twitter: Exactly this: ‘My fellow Americans, the Storm is upon us…….’ God bless.”
QAnon believers think Trump will tweet those words to signal the impending bloodbath. Just last week, Trump re-Truthed a picture of him pointing at the sky with the word “the storm is upon us,” but the prophesied arrests did not come—perhaps, according to QAnon scriptural literalists, because Trump shared the message on Truth Social instead of Twitter.
As of Monday, Trump’s most recent tweet was from Jan. 8, 2021. “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” the last post reads.
