The slow-cooking financial disaster that has been simmering in Donald Trump’s business Crock-Pot is now coming to a boil. Truth Social — the Twitter knock-off the former president launched six months ago in reaction to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube’s decision to deplatform him — might reduce itself to the smoke and char of bankruptcy, according to recent business press reports.
The swill the site serves attracts only a fraction of what Twitter does. Google has yet to approve downloads of its app from the Play Store over moderation issues, blocking it from 40 percent of the smartphone market. It lost $6.5 million in the first year and seems unable to pay its bills. But worst of all, the merger plan that would give it a stock market listing and the $1.3 billion it hoped to raise has stalled.
Once upon a time, Trump fed his 89 million Twitter followers a several-times-a-day mash of insult, provocation and bombast. But he has attracted only an estimated 3.9 million to his Truth Social account, making him one of the biggest social media flops of the decade. Where did the magic go? Why have Trump’s followers forsaken him? Is Truth Social doomed?
Trump deserves credit for marketing his Twitter account to its Everestian heights. He’s always known how to play to the crowds, titillate them and leave them wanting more. During his first campaign and presidency, even a garden-variety Trump tweet could convulse newsrooms. But that was a function of his front-runner status and later his place in the Oval Office. He drew an enormous audience not because he was Donald Trump tweeting but because he was the tweeting president. The power of the office endowed his tweets with muscle that could move financial markets, bury political careers, inspire death threats against his enemies and make the press snap to attention. But exiled to Mar-a-Lago and denied his social media accounts rendered him just another celebrity squeaking noises from a tiny soapbox. When his profile shrank, he became easier to ignore.
