truth social media app djt
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primary 7 24 on wapo escaLator monetize nuggests loomer catturd
oops see tmtg SEE RUSSIA (could be for biz news on co]
merri ok
SEE ECHO ESCALATOR
SEE CORRUPT 3
SEE DEEP FAKE
troll cauc announced on twit
see Nunes (reawaken)
see kahyap
see qanon
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an 11 26
On Wednesday, following the GOP’s historic midterm bloodbath, President Donald Trump received another humiliation when the price of his signature DJT stock plunged to its lowest point ever. While investors were once paying $175 per share, it’s worth just over $5 as of this writing, or as the internet noted, “about as much as a Happy Meal.”
DJT is the stock ticker for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), the parent company for Trump’s Truth Social social media platform. Launched in 2021, early investors paid as much as $175 per share, which plunged to about $13 per share within two years. After the company went public in 2024 amidst Trump’s presidential campaign, its value briefly jumped to $61.96 but has been falling off ever since, and has been in freefall since October. Then on Election Day, as it became clear that the Republicans had been decimated by the midterms, its price went over a cliff, plummeting from just under $6 to a record low of $5.05. The internet noticed and offered its thoughts on the matter.
“Trump Media stock is down,” Washington Post contributor Drew Harwell pointed out. “A share costs about as much as a Happy Meal. At its peak, investors paid $175 a share.” But as writer Amanda Knox noted, “With a Happy Meal, you get a toy that you can keep.”
“Do not buy the dip,” warned New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch. “If you're baffled by Trump voters, consider Trump investors,” mused another comment.
“Chugging this stuff until my torso kerplodes,” admitted one reshare of the disastrous stock chart. And All In producer Adam Weinstein needed no words to express his sentiments, adding only a clip from Mad Men in which character Don Draper achieves a moment of zen.
This isn’t the first time Trump’s company has been hit by bad financial news. In 2025, Truth Social reported net losses of $712 million. At the same time, data suggests that its traffic has fallen by 30 percent year over year, while its users dropped from a peak of roughly 420,000 in June 2025 to about 260,000 in September 2026. In 2023, it was also reported that TMTG was under investigation for laundering money for Russian oligarchs. While TMTG sued the Guardian and Variety for reporting on the story, the suit was dismissed. According to the Washington Post, a federal probe found that one of the company’s wealthy investors was linked to efforts to move assets from Russia, Ukraine, and China to the Caribbean. Over the past two years, the company has been increasingly involved with various cryptocurrency ventures, and the Trump family’s crypto schemes have reportedly raked in roughly $2.3 billion since he reentered the White House.
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mma grpx
trump’s Truth Social account shares more links to John Solomon’s Just the News than any other news site
Written by Matt Gertz
Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty, John Whitehouse & Gideon Taaffe
Published 10/21/26
President Donald Trump has shared links to Just the News, the right-wing agitprop site helmed by White House staffer John Solomon, in at least 367 Truth Social posts or reposts since he returned to the White House last January — more than any other news outlet over that time period.
,,,
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an 10 26?
Trump’s Truth Social hits rock bottom as users flee and stock crashes
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10 26
RANT ATTACK iICC NOBEL WINNER
A conservative commentator for CNN who has long been reported "thirsty" for a job working for Washington Republicans just got publicly insulted for not being picked as President Donald Trump's new press secretary.
"Sorry you lost your race too, @ScottJenningsKY," Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for United States Senate in her state earlier this year, posted on X on Friday.
Instead the White House chose Katherine Zacharia, who was described by Reuters as "a communications adviser for President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform. Her selection was characterized as one that "would put Zacharia at the center of the White House's public messaging operation in the final stretch before the elections, when Trump's agenda and his party's control of Congress will be put before voters. Trump's approval rating fell to 32 percent — the lowest of his political career — as his fellow Republicans soured on his handling of the cost of living and the Iran war, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found."
Reuters added, "The selection of Zacharia underscores the close ties between Trump's administration and his broader political and media operation. It comes after Trump Media unveiled in July that for a fee it would give banks and trading firms 'the fastest' access to posts from influential Truth Social accounts, such as the president's, whose posts often move global markets."
All of this is likely cold comfort for Jennings, who has had more than his fair share of public embarrassments in October. Earlier this month, he attracted controversy for warning Trump that if Democrats win control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections, it would be bad for the country because they would simply investigate him.
"My other advice is that all of these arrangements, whether it’s this one or anything else, you really, really have to dot all your I’s, cross all your T’s and anticipate that every single bit of this is going to be investigated, should you lose control of either chamber,” Jennings said, continuing: “And you have to be ready to be fully transparent about that when that day comes.”
Jennings also came under fire for blaming Trump's economic problems on his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
“His main problem is cost of living and most of the cost-of-living problems that we're dealing with in the country, he inherited," Jennings argued. “We still have a little bit of inflation, but it's largely normalized now. But most of the cost of living, he inherited it.”
He added, “… Certainly to a lot of Americans, you know, when prices spike the way they did during Biden, even going up 2 percent or 3 percent over the last two years, it feels like tacking on even more problems to their lives.”
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AN 8 26
Lawsuit filed against Trump's 'blatantly corrupt' Truth Social scheme
100K$ FOR EARLY ACCESS FOR INSIDER TRADING PRED MKT; LOSING USERS 28%?
A lawsuit filed on Wednesday is challenging the legality of Truth API, a recently unveiled initiative to allow Wall Street firms to pay up to $100,000 per month in exchange for early access to potentially market-moving social media posts from President Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and The Intercept, alleges Truth API violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment by granting insiders special access to the president’s announcements.
The scheme also violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment by “charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost” of receiving the benefit of information from the president, the complaint states.
The lawsuit describes Truth API as “profoundly corrupt,” given that “the president stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company.”
In establishing the plaintiffs’ standing, the complaint argues that The Intercept is being put at a competitive disadvantage by the scheme, given that the news outlet is “both unable and unwilling to subscribe” to it, even though it risks “losing out on timely news to competing organizations.”
Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, accused the president of “trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell,” while vowing that “we won’t let that stand.”
David Bralow, chief legal officer for The Intercept, said that “nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements,” emphasizing that “public information belongs to the public.”
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at FPF, said Truth API “is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago.”
“Trump’s crooked scheme is particularly outrageous,” Stern added, “because, as documented by our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, he frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them. Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them.”
The Intercept and the FPF are being represented in the case by attorneys from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP.
Nikhel Sus, chief counsel at CREW, said his organization was “proud to represent our clients in their effort to end this corrupt and unconstitutional scheme” because “all Americans are entitled to timely access to their president’s public statements, not just those willing to pay the president’s company $100,000 a month.”
Truth API has also drawn the attention of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the US House Judiciary Committee, who announced a probe into the initiative last month, describing it as an “insider-information scheme” that “will enable Wall Street to profit from the president’s frequent market-moving posts on major businesses.”
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an 7 26 grift truth soc
Inside the secret $100K tool giving traders Trump's news first
AN 7 26
One of the Trump family's companies this week unveiled the latest in their long line of moneymaking schemes, and according to the D.C. insiders at Pod Save America, it constitutes "truly one of the most wildly corrupt things that has ever happened."
President Donald Trump, his family and their many business holdings have been doggedly determined to milk as much money as possible out of his second term through an unending parade of schemes and grifts. As Trump himself admitted in a recent interview, he has felt no compunction about profiting off his station after realizing that no one would stop him if he did.
Earlier this week, the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Trump's Truth Social platform, announced its intention to sell early access to "market-moving" posts on the platform from some of its "highest-ranking" accounts. The president is by far and away the biggest account on Truth Social, with his continued use of it over other social media sites being essentially the only reason it still exists. In effect, the plan appears to be selling early access to Trump's posts so that banks and traders can take advantage of how they will impact the stock market.
In one of the most recent episodes of the podcast, the former Obama administration officials at Pod Save America dug into the news, calling it an alarming new low for Trump's corrupt second-term pursuits.
"Why don't they just start asking the Treasury to print money for the Trumps?" co-host Jon Favreau, the former head speechwriter for Barack Obama, said. "That is, I don't know why we're going through all of these schemes and this and that. Everything's so complicated. Just go to [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, ask him to start printing money, put it in your pocket, walk away."
The other co-host, former senior Obama comms advisor Dan Pfeiffer, did not mince words with his reaction to the news.
"This is truly one of the most wildly corrupt things that has ever happened," Pfeiffer said. "And that's saying a lot."
Pfeiffer also stressed that, despite the fact that Truth Social is a "stupid platform" that few people outside of political circles pay attention to, Trump's posts there are legitimate presidential statements. In effect, he said, this new plan from the Trump Media & Technology Group would be akin to past presidential administrations giving Wall Street early access to official speeches or press releases.
"Example: president announces a new ceasefire with Iran, you can use that to buy oil futures," Pfeiffer explained. "He says the end of the ceasefire, you can sell your oil futures faster than anyone else because you have paid money to the president to get access to that market-moving information before everyone else in this country."
He further suggested that the move represented an "abuse of power" from Trump, as well as an example of "a high crime and a misdemeanor," referring to the sorts of offenses for which a president could be impeached.
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an 5 26
Natalie Harp has become one of the most influential figures in shaping President Trump's public messaging, yet few Americans know her name. The executive assistant operates largely behind the scenes, serving as the critical filter between the president's impulses and the millions of followers who consume his Truth Social feed each day.
Her role has expanded dramatically since Trump's return to the White House, according to a new, wide-ranging report in the *Wall Street Journal*, making her instrumental in the nearly 8,800 posts published to the president's account since the start of his second term. While Trump personally approves all content, Harp controls much of what reaches his desk for approval in the first place.
Each evening, Harp arrives with stacks of printed-out draft posts—material she and other advisers believe will appeal to the president. These proposed messages often recycle content from fringe social media accounts, partisan commentators, and anonymous users across X and other platforms. According to people familiar with the process, Harp scours the internet for videos, images, and text that align with Trump's grievances and worldview.
Once Trump approves the selections, Harp logs into the president's account—often during late-night and early-morning hours when most White House staff have gone home. She then posts batches of messages in rapid succession, contributing to the frenetic posting patterns that have characterized Trump's Truth Social presence.
On a single night in December, Trump's accountposted nearly 160 times between 8:17 p.m. and midnight. Such bursts have occurred 44 times since Trump returned to office, with dozens or more posts frequently published between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., according to the Journal's analysis.
Harp's influence extends to some of the most controversial content to appear on Trump's account. Earlier this year, at the president's direction, she posted a video containing racist imagery depicting former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes, as well as an AI-generated image portraying Trump as a Christ-like figure. Both posts were later deleted after bipartisan backlash.
Trump later told reporters he had not seen the offensive portion of the video before approving it, blaming an editing error. However, the episode raised questions about how thoroughly the president reviews content before it reaches his followers.
What distinguishes Harp's role is her apparent autonomy in the process. Unlike typical White House operations, she does not share draft posts with the chief of staff's office, communications aides, or national security officials before they are posted. When questioned about this lack of coordination, Harp has told colleagues she works directly for Trump and only answers to him.
This approach has frustrated some White House officials who worry about the absence of institutional checks on the content being published under the president's name.
The lack of broader review means that some of the most divisive presidential messaging bypasses traditional White House communication channels entirely. The posts often amplify conspiracy theories, including false claims about the 2020 election being stolen. They describe migrants as existential threats, call for the arrest of political opponents, and mock critics—all without input from seasoned communications professionals or policy experts.
Much of the content Harp selects comes from obscure or anonymous accounts. The Wall Street Journal found that significant portions of Trump's Truth Social feed consist of reposts from accounts like @TheSCIF, @WallStreetApes, and @NathanielSami—users whose identities and motivations are largely unknown to the general public.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheungdefended the arrangement, stating that "Truth Social has never been hotter" because it allows Trump to offer "unfiltered and direct thoughts to the American people, without the biased media taking him out of context." He declined to discuss internal deliberations about how the posting process works.
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fusion business?!
PSW 4 26 CORRUPT STATS $ TRUMP KIDS BARRON
ARAB JUSTIN SUN SUE LIBERTY, DRONE PLUS GOLF MERGER
pakistan stable coin?
Apr 22, 2026 Pod Save the World
Tommy and Ben break down another chaotic and consequential week in global affairs. Trump blinks and extends the ceasefire with Iran, but the Strait of Hormuz remains closed as US-Iran negotiations stall. Meanwhile, an internal power struggle between Iran's elected leaders and military is complicating talks, and the human cost for ordinary Iranians continues to mount. In Lebanon, Trump stunned Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu by publicly ordering Israel to stop bombing, but the IDF continues to occupy southern Lebanon, and an explosive image of an IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ threatens to erode evangelical support for Israel.
The guys also dig into the sprawling conflicts of interest and corruption plaguing Trump's foreign policy team: Jared Kushner's billion-dollar Gulf slush fund, Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s drone grift, and the Trump family’s foray into the crypto and fusion energy business. Finally, they talk about the historic election results in Hungary and Bulgaria,
Trump’s slow-rolling regime change efforts in Cuba, and reports that FBI Director Kash Patel is such a sloppy drunk that he’s become a threat to national security. Then Tommy is joined by former USAID official Nicholas Enrich to talk about his new book, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. Preorder Ben’s book All We Say: The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches and subscribe to his Substack here.
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THIS IS ACTUALLY FROM THE WHITE HOUSE?!
AN 4 26
Trump’s new app has no privacy policy and uses Russian software - Alternet.org
President Donald Trump has been promoting the White House’s new mobile app — pushing it to become the third-most downloaded item on Apple’s popular App Store. But the app reportedly has numerous cybersecurity vulnerabilities, does not properly disclose the data it shares, and uses software components from a Russia-founded company.
“Cybersecurity researchers warn that the White House’s new app regularly shares users’ IP addresses, time zones and other data to third-party services,” NOTUS reports. “But most of its users wouldn’t know that, because the app doesn’t disclose its data sharing the way most others do.”
Cybersecurity experts were shocked by the app’s “slipshod” approach to cybersecurity, especially as it is essentially a product of the White House, and especially since the U.S. is at war.
“The U.S. government’s infrastructure is being attacked from all sides right now, and having an amateur WordPress developer running the White House’s public presence puts everybody who visits it at risk,” Philip Fields, a cybersecurity researcher and former FBI intelligence analyst, told NOTUS. He explains that if this were just a small business’ “random app,” it would not be a story.
“But it’s not,” Fields added. “This is the White House.”
Additionally, the app reportedly has left users and some White House staffers vulnerable. One researcher showed NOTUS screenshots revealing that a Russia-founded software kit company that “provides premade widgets for the app makes public the personal information of some White House staffers through the app.” NOTUS chose to not disclose the staffers’ personal information.
Cybersecurity experts also told NOTUS that the data collected by the White House is not being properly disclosed.
“The White House, as of its latest version released on Friday, left that privacy manifest completely blank, suggesting it collects no data from users,” NOTUS reported.
“It seems to be sharing quite a lot of data about the users to these third parties,” a researcher told NOTUS. “The problem is that the privacy manifest says they do not share that information, but in fact they do. … That is a problem for end-user privacy because effectively, they’re misleading users about how their data is shared.”
A White House press release promoted the launch of its “powerful new official mobile app — delivering President Donald J. Trump and his Administration directly to the American people like never before.”
In his promotional video, Trump says, “Every American should expect their government to have transparency, and the Trump administration is the most transparent in history. That is for sure.”
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an 12 25
Over the Christmas holiday, it was clear that President Donald Trump spent a lot of time on his social media. Many of the things he amplified in his 150 posts, however, turned out to be from foreign trolls.
The Daily Beast wrote Tuesday about Trump's posting frenzy, calling him "confused" and highlighting his advanced age. It cited research done into the posts by the MeidasNetwork, showing that at least 15 of the people Trump promoted weren't posting from the United States.
Sami Nathaniel, for example, got five of his posts shared by Trump, including one calling America "for Americans." Yet, he was posting from South Asia.
Trump frequently reposts memes and comments from South Asia accounts “Sami Nathaniel” and “Caroline."
Charlie's Voice Rising, another X account that has a blue checkmark, only joined the site in Dec. 2024. That individual is tweeting to its 194,400-plus followers from "Eastern Europe (Non-EU)."
"Trump Girl" features a white person with long blond hair and a MAGA hat. They're also tweeting from South Asia. Trump shared a screenshot of one of her X posts, which is a share of one of Trump's posts about the "STOLEN" election.
This isn't the first time Trump has amplified accounts from foreign accounts pretending to love him. In one late-night spree at the start of the month, Trump posted 160 things in under four hours.
The details displayed about the user come from Elon Musk's recent decision to show where each account was registered, when it was created, how often it has switched usernames and how the app was downloaded. It also details where someone might be trying to circumvent monitoring attempts. Caroline, for example, shows that X believes the user deployed a "VPN," or Virtual Private Network, to mask their true location.
Once the tool was rolled out, a reporter noticed that scores of the top MAGA influencers and right-wing personality accounts weren't posting from the United States. Each of them was fishing for likes and shares.
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an 11 25
President Donald Trump was recently handed another loss in court, after failing to convince a Florida judge that he was owed money by the Guardian newspaper for reporting on a federal investigation involving his company.
Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell reported Monday on the ruling by Judge Hunter W. Carroll of Florida's Twelfth Judicial Circuit, who is an appointee of then-Gov. Rick Scott (R). Carroll granted an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion the Guardian filed, which defendants often file when alleging a lawsuit has been filed with the intent of intruding on First Amendment rights.
Additionally, Lowell reported that Judge Carroll found that reporting critical of Trump and his businesses could not be used by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which is the parent company of his Truth Social platform, to demonstrate actual malice in litigation.
TMTG sued over a 2023 article in the Guardian, in which the paper reported on a federal investigation into the company by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY). TMTG had accepted $8 million in emergency loans from shadowy entities it knew little about at the time it accepted the money. One loan for $2 million came from Paxum Bank, which is headquartered in the island nation of Dominica. The other $6 million loan came from an entity called E.S. Family Trust.
The Guardian reported at the time that one of the trustees of E.S. Family Trust was a director of Paxum Bank. And one of the bank's part-owners had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. SDNY prosecutors were probing whether the loans violated federal money laundering laws.
According to that report, one of the executives of TMTG floated the idea of returning the money given the lack of details and transparency about who was providing the loans. TMTG co-founder Will Wilkerson — who eventually became a whistleblower in the federal investigation — told SDNY that Chief Financial Officer Phillip Juhan was uncomfortable about the murky nature of the two entities.
The $2 million from Paxum Bank was sourced in December of 2021 by Patrick Orlando, who was executive at Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which was the entity TMTG merged with when the company went public. Orlando charged a $240,000 finders' fee for the loan, which was sourced through an offshore bank. Donald Trump Jr. ultimately signed off on the loan, per the report.
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On Truth Social, Trump gives official announcements and shares AI slop to over 10 million followers
In September, amid official personnel and policy announcements, Trump amplified right-wing media clips and posted memes and AI-generated pro-Trump content
Written by Jack Winstanley & Alex Kaplan
Research contributions from Kayla Gogarty
Published 10/03/25 mma
President Donald Trump uses his account on his social media platform, Truth Social, as a vehicle for amplifying pro-Trump messaging and attacking his perceived enemies. A Media Matters review of Trump’s account, which has at least 10.8 million followers, during September found that he repeatedly announced administration appointments, military actions, and new policies, shared right-wing media articles and clips, and posted pro-Trump content seemingly generated by artificial intelligence, including content advancing his messaging and/or attacking his critics.
Since launching the social media platform in 2022, Trump has used it to boost conspiracy theories and share AI-generated content
- Trump has been using Truth Social since shortly after launching the platform in 2022. Truth Social launched in early 2022, and Trump began posting actively on the platform that April. NPR, [2/22/22; Media Matters, 10/29/24]
- A New York Times study found Trump repeatedly amplified conspiracy theories on Truth Social over a six-month period in 2024. According to the Times study, “often multiple times a day,” Trump is “concocting or promoting dark, paranoid material and pushing it out to his millions of followers. Mr. Trump is so hungry for this content that he appears to be willing to share outlandish information from anyone, including both well-known conspiracists and anonymous accounts that tag him.” The study, which examined part of 2024, “zeroed in on the 170 Truth Social accounts that Mr. Trump had amplified on the platform. Some are ones he follows; others have just come across his radar. The vast majority of the accounts regularly promoted conspiracy theories, the analysis showed.” The New York Times, [10/29/24]
- A Media Matters review has found that Trump has boosted QAnon-promoting Truth Social accounts over 1,000 times. Among those amplifications include dozens of images that explicitly promote the conspiracy theory. Trump has also repeatedly used his account to boost content from the “Dilley meme team.” In December 2023, The New York Times found that “since March, Mr. Trump has posted videos made by the [Dilley] team to his Truth Social and Instagram accounts — which have more than 30 million followers combined — at least two dozen times” including “memes that feature him in a positive light.” Media Matters, [10/29/24, 6/27/24; The New York Times, 12/13/23]
- Trump and his team have repeatedly posted images of Trump that appear to be AI-generated. As noted by The Associated Press, “The AI images of Trump posted by him and his team” are “self-evident in their fictitiousness. Pope Francis dies, and Trump jokes to reporters that he’d like to be pope. A week later, he is, but in an AI-generated image that he posts, reposted by the White House. Trump likens himself to a king in a Truth Social post in February, and AI makes him one in an X post by the White House less than an hour later. The artifice arrives in Trump’s usual style — brassy, unabashed, attention-grabbing — and squares with his social media team’s heavy meme posting, which it has promised to continue.” The Associated Press, [9/29/25]
- In September 2025, Trump got attention for posting multiple AI-generated videos.The videos depicted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in a sombrero and added fake audio for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), playing mariachi music in the background. Trump also had posted — and later deleted — an apparent AI-generated video that includes him promoting a conspiracy theory that reportedly emerged in far-right online communities and purports that “medbeds” exist to cure all kinds of ailments. Bluesky, [9/27/25; Truth Social, 9/29/25, 9/30/25; Rolling Stone, 9/28/25; USA Today, 9/30/25]
- ## Trump often posts administration announcements, such as appointments, military strikes, and policy statements, and uses his account to tout his supposed accomplishments
- After using the platform to praise her accomplishments, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was appointing Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. This came after he used the platform to call on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and New York Attorney General Letitia James and argued that Halligan would provide “desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!” Truth Social, [9/20/25, 9/20/25, 9/20/25]
- Trump first announced two separate strikes on vessels allegedly carrying narcotics off the coast of Venezuela, on Truth Social, sharing videos of each. In one post, Trump argued that the vessels supposedly “POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security,” and added a warning to any would-be drug traffickers, “WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” Truth Social, [9/2/25, 9/15/25; CBS News, 9/19/25; The Associated Press, 9/16/25]
- Trump has repeatedly announced new tariff policies on Truth Social. On September 29, for example, he claimed that he “will be imposing substantial Tariffs on any Country that does not make its furniture in the United States” and “a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.” Truth Social, [9/29/25, 9/29/25; CNN, 9/29/25]
- Other policy announcements on Truth Social have included his deployment of troops to Portland and his declassification of government records about Amelia Earhart. On September 27, he posted that he was “directing” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” On September 26, he posted that he was “ordering” the administration to “declassify and release all Government Records related to Amelia Earhart, her final trip, and everything else about her.” Many of these types of announcements on Truth Social end with “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Truth Social, [9/27/25, 9/26/29; NPR, 9/29/25; Politico, 9/26/25]
- Trump has also used his Truth Social presence to share White House posts touting his supposed accomplishments and public approval. In one post, Trump shared a video purporting to show that he “arrives to massive applause at Ryder Cup.” Another announced that, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll, “57% of Americans approve of President Donald J. Trump.” A third post contained a graphic claiming that Trump has “ended 7 wars in just 7 months.” In another post, Trump shared an official White House video of him welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. Truth Social, [9/27/25, 9/26/25, 9/26/25, 9/29/25; Twitter/X, 9/26/25, 9/25/25, 9/23/25, 9/29/25]
- ## Trump posts pro-Trump memes and apparent AI-generated videos and photos that advance his messaging and/or attack his critics
- Trump posted a seemingly AI-generated image depicting him firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Truth Social, [9/27/25]
- Trump posted a meme depicting him seemingly sending the military into Chicago, with the text “Chipocalypse Now.”An online channel that spreads conspiracy theories took credit for the meme. Truth Social, [9/6/25; Bluesky, 9/8/25, 9/8/25]
- Trump posted a seemingly AI-generated image celebrating settling his lawsuit with YouTube. Truth Social, [9/29/25]
- Trump posted an image depicting him trading stocks in the Oval Office. Truth Social, [9/18/25]
- Trump shared a seemingly altered video purporting to show Nancy Pelosi saying, “Ever since I left Congress, my trades are shit. I can’t get any insider information anymore.” The video, which also has overlayed text that says, “Who did this???” and laughing emojis, purports to show Pelosi saying that her husband, Paul, is “still in love with a homeless hammer guy,” a reference to an assault on her husband. Truth Social, [9/8/25; Media Matters, 11/1/22]
- Trump posted an apparent AI-generated video depicting Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie sumo wrestling. Truth Social, [9/3/25]
- Amid backlash to a proposed redesign of the Cracker Barrel logo and restaurants, Trump posted an apparent AI-generated video depicting him shaking hands and dancing with the person in the original logo. Trump had previously criticized the redesign and, according to CNBC, Cracker Barrel communicated directly with the White House about their plans to scrap it. Truth Social, [9/3/25; CNBC, 8/26/25]
- Trump posted a video that appears to be AI-generated and depicts Trump standing in front of Mount Rushmore, with the presidential figures carved into the monument smiling along with him. Truth Social, [9/3/25]
- Trump posted a seemingly altered video with confetti added to a purported CNN segment showing Trump dancing and a chyron claiming that “Democrats have lost 2.1 million voters, Republicans have gained 2.4 million.”Truth Social, [9/3/25]
- Trump shared multiple memes from a pro-Trump “meme team.” The lead of the meme team, Brenden Dilley, hyped one of them, depicting Trump pole-vaulting over a Cracker Barrel sign on his podcast, saying, “Last night was a very good night for the Dilley meme team. ... Can we just take the moment to appreciate Dilley meme team on President 47’s page?” Truth Social, [9/3/25; Bluesky, 9/4/25, 9/4/25; The New York Times, 12/13/23]
- ## Trump amplifies right-wing media clips and articles amplifying his views and policies or attacking his critics and political foes
- Trump shared Blaze Media footage showing police units responding to a protest and arresting a protester. Trump added the caption “CHICAGO…” to the post. Truth Social, [9/28/25]
- Trump shared a clip of Real America’s Voice host John Solomon claiming that he had evidence that “scores of FBI agents ... believe[d] the FBI had become politically biased against the conservative movement.” Truth Social, [9/27/25]
- In a clip fromThe Scott Jennings Radio Show, shared by Trump on Truth Social, Jennings attacked those who “cheered the political prosecutions of Donald Trump,” telling them to “choke on it.” Truth Social, [9/27/25]
- Trump shared a portion of Fox News’ live broadcast of a press conference announcing the renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Truth Social, [9/5/25]
- Trump shared an article published by Right Side Broadcasting Network about his decision to “host a UFC cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House.”The article highlighted that “supporters describe the decision as a bold show of spectacle.” Truth Social, [9/6/25; Right Side Broadcasting Network, 9/5/25]
//
10/03/22 2:16 PM EDT
12/14/22 12:05 PM EST
05/01/23
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“How much is Trump pocketing off the presidency?” That’s the question driving a major new investigation by journalist David D. Kirkpatrick in The New Yorker, which finds that the first family has been leveraging its place atop U.S. politics to rake in billions. According to Kirkpatrick, Donald Trump and his immediate family have made $3.4 billion from his time in the White House, including more than $2.3 billion from various cryptocurrency ventures alone.
“What really surprised me about all this is just how fast they’re making this money. They seem to turn down no opportunity,” says Kirkpatrick. “It really sharpens the question of what a buyer, so to speak, might be getting for that.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
“The Number: How Much Is Trump Pocketing Off the Presidency?” That’s the headline of an exhaustive new investigation published by The New Yorker magazine. In the piece, journalist David Kirkpatrick writes, quote, “Many payments now flowing to Trump, his wife, and his children and their spouses would be unimaginable without his Presidencies: a two-billion-dollar investment from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince; a luxury jet from the Emir of Qatar; profits from at least five different ventures peddling crypto; fees from an exclusive club stocked with Cabinet officials and named Executive Branch.”
In March, Forbes estimated that Trump’s net worth had more than doubled over a year to $5 billion. And a few months later, The New York Times estimated Trump’s wealth had grown to $10 billion. But these estimates and others did not attempt to look at how exactly his fortune is growing.
David Kirkpatrick writes, quote, “Although the notion that Trump is making colossal sums off the Presidency has become commonplace, nobody could tell me how much he’s made. … I decided to attempt to tally up just how much Trump and his immediate family have pocketed off his time in the White House,” unquote.
Well, David Kirkpatrick joins us now in our New York studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Explain how you arrived at the number. And what are the — is the period of time that he has made this money?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Well, what’s important here is that I’m trying to be fair to the president. I’m not out to get Trump here. I went through and looked at all the sources of income, the income streams flowing into the Trump Organization, the president and his family, and I asked: Is this money that he would have made absent the presidency? Because he’s got hotels, he’s got golf courses. Sometimes people go there just to play golf or rent a hotel room. We’re not talking about that. So, I only wanted to look at money that he has made because he is or has been in the White House. And then I tried to ask, as best I could: What is each one of those things worth? And that’s how I came up with $3.4 billion. And again, I think what I hope will make this report credible, and the reason I urge people to read it, is that it’s — I’ve tried as best I can to be fair. I’ve shown all my work. And people can make their own conclusions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David, could you talk about some of the specifics, from the small to the big, for instance, the ubiquitous MAGA hat at Trump rallies? How is — Trump has a private store that sells these? Can you talk about that, and also the family’s investments in crypto?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, the hats. I was quite surprised to realize that in addition to the campaign merchandise sold by his campaign, which all candidates and all presidents do — that’s money that goes into the campaign coffers, that he can’t really touch for personal purposes — the Trump Organization also has its own online store, and they sell all kinds of Trump merchandise that looks very much like its campaign merchandise, but this money flows to Trump and himself — you know, $20, $40 for a pair of flip-flops, a pair of beer koozies, a baseball hat. He’s making, you know, millions of dollars — you know, I forget what the exact number was, but 20 millions of dollars over the last few years — selling this kind of merchandise, which is arguably competing with his own campaign and diverting some of the money that his supporters might think is supporting the MAGA movement and his candidates to his own pocket. That’s the — you know, that’s the small end. Nobody thinks that anybody who’s paying $50 for a baseball hat is actually going to get any influence, you know, over the president in return for that. That’s just a way of making money.
On the other extreme, there’s significant amounts of money flowing into the Trump Organization now through its various or the president’s various crypto enterprises. Some of these, you know, predate his return to the White House, but I tried to look here at the — you know, all the money that they made off of the White House over the course of the two terms and the time in between, when he remained a kind of kingmaker in the Republican Party, so — and most of it has happened during around his second term, you know, shortly before, through his second term. In terms of crypto, you know, should I go through and break down all the ways they’re making money off of crypto?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: OK, well, here you go. So, first of all, for people who might not be familiar with crypto, all it is, really, is a kind of online ledger or spreadsheet keeping track of who owns what. There’s a number of ways the Trump family has tried to take advantage of this new technology. He started out by selling NFTs, non-fungible tokens, which are basically sort of digital cartoons of himself.
Then he moved on to setting up a company. His family, his sons set up a company called World Liberty Financial. And that’s done a couple things. It sold a kind of token or online certificate that would ostensibly allow somebody to vote on whatever its futures, plans in the crypto business might be. They raised, you know, $550 million selling those tokens, and 75% of that flows to the Trump Organization. Then it went into a new business, selling what’s known as a stablecoin. A stablecoin is basically the online equivalent of a dollar. It’s not really an investment. It’s just a kind of, like, almost a checking account. It’s a way to transfer money here and there, perhaps more efficiently by doing it digitally. For the company, World Liberty Financial, they get to make money off of investing that money in treasuries while it’s out in the world circulating as a stablecoin. So, they go into the stablecoin business. Their first customer is a company owned by the United Arab Emirates that puts up $2 billion to buy stablecoin. While that money is out circulating as stablecoin, they’re going to get about 4% a year on that, I calculate, by investing it in short-term treasuries. So, that’s a couple.
There’s a few others he’s gone into. His memecoin is perhaps the most famous. President Trump, right around the time he was elected, before he was inaugurated, went into this business selling a kind of online novelty, basically just a joke. It’s a kind of digital certificate that just allows you to say, “I paid money to own a little Trump novelty.” That’s it. That’s all it is. There’s nothing to it. And it doesn’t even purport to sort of hold wealth, although you can trade it back and forth. He’s made about $300 million selling those memecoins.
And the last thing is a little bit of kind of a financial engineering that his company, Trump Media & Technology Group, a publicly traded company of which he’s the chairman — a little bit of financial engineering that that company has done. Now, that is the company that owns Truth Social. Truth Social is a very small online platform, social media platform. It doesn’t have much revenue, maybe a million dollars a quarter. It’s never really made a profit. It doesn’t have much chance of ever making a profit. And yet, the stock that owns it, Trump Media & Technology Group, trades at a kind of surprisingly high price. People on Wall Street consider it a meme stock. It trades basically on how people feel about President Trump. And in the last couple months, really in June, that company has done a remarkable thing, which is they have sold — they’ve issued new shares of stock. They’ve sold the stock at their inflated memecoin price, and they’ve taken that money, and they’ve bought bitcoin. They’ve also done the same thing to try to stockpile some cash, but they’ve bought about $2.3 or $2.4 billion worth of bitcoin, and they’ve stockpiled about $760 million worth of cash. So, in the end of last quarter, they said, “Look, we’ve got $3.1 billion of liquid assets on our books.” So, I calculate that since President Trump owns 42% of that company, he has an ownership interest in that $3.1 billion. So, as I was doing this reporting over the last few months there, my calculation of their net worth, of his net worth, bumped by — I shouldn’t say “his net worth” — of the amount of money he’s made off the presidency, jumped up by a billion dollars.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, other members of the family, for instance, Jared Kushner and his daughter, in terms of the investments by foreign government sovereign funds in them, and what that looks like?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: I think you’re thinking about Jared Kushner’s private equity firm.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: So, after he left — after Trump left the White House in 2020, his son, Jared Kushner, who had been in real estate, went into private equity, a new line of work. And he went to the Persian Gulf to solicit money, and he asked the sovereign wealth fund of the United — of Saudi Arabia to invest. Their panel of advisers said, “This is a mistake. He doesn’t have a track record in private equity, only real estate. There could be some public relations problem here. People are going to say this is a payoff to the family of a president.” The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who controls the public investment fund, overruled that and, nonetheless, invested the $2 billion with Jared Kushner’s private equity firm.
Since then, he’s accumulated as much as $4.8 billion in assets under management, almost all of it from foreign sources, quite a bit of it also from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Under standard private equity terms, he would get 2% a year of that money as asset management fees. With Saudi Arabia, it’s a little bit lower. But that is also, I’m counting as, money flowing into the Trump family coffers as a result of their time in the White House.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us, David, about the family? I mean, in the first term, many of them were advisers to President Trump. They were in the White House. They would have to deal with ethics rules. We don’t see that right now. So, I’m wondering how the family business has changed from the first term to the second term. And I also wanted to ask you about — for example, President Trump says he struck a trade agreement with Vietnam. He’ll apply a 20% tariff on Vietnamese imports, down from the 46% he threatened. The reported deal comes just weeks after the Trump Organization broke ground on a $1.5 billion golf course in Vietnam. A few questions there.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, a few questions there. So, during the first term, President Trump, on his way into office, volunteered that he and his family were not going to do any deals overseas, because they didn’t like the way that looked. Right? It raises the specter that some foreign interest, or even foreign government, is going to try to buy favor with the U.S. government by paying Trump and his family privately.
During the second term, the family has said, “We’re not going to do that anymore. We’re no longer going to abstain from those deals.” Donald Trump Jr. has said publicly, “Look, we restrained ourselves last term, and people accused us of profiteering anyway. So we’re not going to lock ourselves in, quote-unquote, 'the proverbial padded room.' We’re just going to go ahead and be businessmen and do as many deals as we can.” And they’ve done quite a few.
Now, again, in my accounting, I’m not including deals which appear to be extensions of the business they were in before he was elected. You know, he had licensed his name for use on four condominium buildings around India before he ever went into the White House. Now there are five more Indian projects. Fine, let’s leave that aside. That’s, more or less, legitimate Trump business.
On the other hand, since late 2022, when he was really the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, he’s had a whole flurry of new deals around the Persian Gulf with one Saudi Arabian company, and that’s in, you know, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, a couple in Saudi Arabia and one in Qatar. And I don’t think there’s any way those would have happened without the presidency. And that adds up to, I would say, you know, guessing as best I can the various income streams involved — that’s more than $100 million right there in terms of its present value.
You mentioned the Vietnam project. That’s another one that I think, you know, would not have unfolded as it has, were he not returning to the White House. That is probably, you know, physically, going to be the largest Trump-branded property in the world. Its planned size is about three times as big as Central Park with 54 holes of golf. It’s very hard to know how much the Trump family is actually going to make out of that property. On his most recent financial disclosure form, he said that the Trump Organization had already received $5 million in initial licensing fees from lending their name to that property. He’s not going to build it. He’s not going to own it. They’re just lending their name and some management services. So, I figure, over 10 years, which is kind of a minimum term for a management or licensing agreement, he’s likely to make at least $50 million, with a present value of about $40 million. Probably it’ll be a lot more than that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how much of this, in your perspective, is legal or — and also, how much of it is unprecedented for a president?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: As far as I can tell, it’s all legal. You know, I don’t have any evidence of a quid pro quo. I don’t have any evidence of a specific instance where he has explicitly sold a public favor for personal profit. And the remedy that our laws prescribe for potential conflicts of interest is disclosure. Elected officials disclose what they own and how they’re making money, and the voters or the Congress can decide what’s appropriate or inappropriate. And I guess we’ll have to see how voters feel about that. The other part of your question, I think, was — what again?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: How much of this is unprecedented for a president?
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of — that’s been widely reported. There’s nothing like this before, right? A lot of presidents make money after they leave, selling books, you know, various other endeavors. But he and his family are making this money while he’s in the White House. And the scale is really quite novel.
AMY GOODMAN: And in the last 10 seconds, you talk about the frenzy.
DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Well, that’s right. What really surprised me about all this is just how fast they’re making this money. They seem to turn down no opportunity. And that’s what makes the questions about a conflict of interest all the more pressing, because I feel like when they are so evidently zealous, so eager to make money, it really sharpens the question of what a buyer, so to speak, might be getting for that.
AMY GOODMAN: David Kirkpatrick, we want to thank you so much for being with us, reporter with The New Yorker. We’ll link to your piece, “The Number: How Much Is Trump Pocketing Off the Presidency?”
Watch the segment below:
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RWW 7 25
Global Project Against Hate And Extremism: Tulsi Gabbard’s “Claims” that the Obama Administration Staged a “Coup” Fuel Far Right’s Fantasies of Political Violence
On July 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard made a post on Twitter alleging “the most powerful people in the Obama administration,” including former President Barack Obama, were involved in a “years-long coup” and a “treasonous conspiracy” against Donald Trump. Her post quickly went viral, amassing over 13 million views over the weekend, and galvanized the online fringe to fantasize about violence against their political enemies. Trump fanned Gabbard’s flames, sharing a racist AI-generated video of Obama being arrested on Truth Social, which Trump owns.
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TROLLING?
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President Donald Trump is being criticized for sharing a post containing a debunked conspiracy theory that former President Joe Biden died in 2020. Trump reposted a message on his Truth Social platform claiming that Biden was "executed" in 2020 and that a clone replaced him.
"There is no #JoeBiden - executed in 2020. #Biden clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see. >#Democrats dont know the difference," read the post Trump shared on Saturday night.
Social media users reacted to the post, saying that the president's act of sharing it was concerning
Political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote on the social platform X: “Not to worry, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are on the case. Oh, wait……”
READ MORE:Signs the tide is turning on Trump
Researcher Alex Kaplan noted: “Claims that Biden has been replaced by a clone have been a thing over the years in the QAnon community. This post Trump amplified was quoting a post from a QAnon group on Truth Social as well.”
“Donald Trump just shared a post on Truth Social that claims Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with a clone that is “robotic engineered.” Trump is absolutely out of his mind. He’s clearly unstable and unwell. This is very concerning,” said Democratic influencer Harry Sissonin a post on X.
“If Joe Biden posted something like this Hannity would be roused from his sleep to anchor special coverage. But Trump posts apes___ conspiracy theories and the mainstream press yawns. His craziness has been completely normalized,” said progressive influencer Aaron Rupar.
“It always gets worse with this guy. Always,” wrote another user.
READ MORE:Outrage grows over a single paragraph buried deep in Republicans' 'Big Beautiful Bill'
“So there was no cognitive decline?” tweeted another.
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mma 10 24
...Amplified at least 190 individual QAnon-promoting accounts, including 14 accounts that he had not promoted before April 30.
Truth Social’s leadership has actively courted QAnon supporters to the platform, and the former president and his allies have associated with and appealed to the QAnon community in other ways as well. For instance, former Trump administration official and Truth Social board member Kash Patel said that “we try to incorporate” QAnon “into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences.” ....
an 10 24
Whistleblower slams Trump Media for outsourcing jobs abroad as betrayal of 'America First'
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Truth Social stock slides after Trump goes back to TwitterRob Beschizza
BB 8 24
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mma 8 24
former President Donald Trump has repeatedly interacted with the Truth Social account “Patriot4Life,” including thanking them and “retruthing” them. Patriot4Life has repeatedly promoted calls for political killings, including recently retruthing an image calling for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz to be killed.
Trump has interacted with Patriot4Life ("@1776WeThePeople1776") in at least 70 instances on his social media platform. Those interactions include thanking the account for a pro-Trump message, retruthing the account’s call to jail lawmakers, retruthing what seemed to be an AI image of Trump praying with six fingers, promoting the account’s claim that “God has chosen” Trump, and retruthing the account’s attacks on Harris and Walz, including an image portraying Harris with a dung beetle body and a darkened face.
Trump also recently retruthed QAnon-themed posts from Patriot4Life. (Media Matters has documented how Trump has promoted QAnon material on Truth Social dozens of times.)
Any Trump follower that sees Trump’s repeat promotions and then visits that account would likely see exhortations for political violence against Trump’s opponents.
Patriot4Life recently retruthed a call to murder Harris and Walz in a woodchipper:
Patriot4Life posted an image of numerous political figures, including former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder. Text stated that “Our Founding Fathers would have hung them for Treason” along with an image of a noose.
The account retruthed someone saying “HANG ALL TRAITORS” alongside an image of Congress.
The account also posted a meme portraying Rep. Ilham Omar (D-MN) as one of “the enemies” and then retruthed someone suggesting that she be executed.
Additionally, Patriot4Life has posted numerous misogynistic attacks on Harris.
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wapo
Democracy Dies in Darkness
How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world
By Sarah Ellison and
Clara Ence Morse
May 8, 2024
On the second day of his civil fraud trial in New York last fall, Donald Trump posted a photo of a young woman, Allison Greenfield, standing next to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Trump claimed falsely that she was “Schumer’s girlfriend” and was “running this case against me.”
Donald Trump's Truth Social profile picture
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Schumer’s girlfriend, Alison R. Greenfield, is running this case against me. How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!! https://www.instagram.com/greenfield4civilcourt/A photo of Allison Greenfield standing next to New York senator Charles E. Schumer displayed as a silhouette.The Washington Post is not displaying this image.
October 3, 2023 at 6:56 p.m.
Trump’s post about Greenfield, the principal law clerk for New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, received only around 1,400 shares, modest activity for a former president whose Twitter account once had nearly 90 million followers.
Engoron, who oversaw the trial, ordered Trump to take down the post, which he did the same day. But the message was already out. The next day, insults directed at Greenfield flooded right-wing podcasts and social media.
X/Twitter
alt text
Laura Loomer
LauraLoomer
President Trump posted this on Truth Social. Judge Arthur Engoron’s Principal Law Clerk Allison Greenfield appears to be a Democrat political operative who is collaborating with @SenSchumer who has openly proclaimed his desire to “get Trump” and see him jailed. WITCH HUNT
October 3, 2023 at 3:13 p.m.
TimCast podcast
|
October 4, 2023
“These people have an agenda. They have had a bias, obvious bias against Donald Trump from day one.”
— Tim Pool
The Michael Knowles Show podcast
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October 4, 2023
“Trump took a swipe at one of the judge's staff members and pointed out that she's a huge lib, Alison Greenfield. She's a big lib. She's a big Democrat.”
— Michael Knowles
Over the next two months, dozens of articles focused on Greenfield’s role. Conservative media personalities such as Laura Loomer and the cable TV news channel Newsmax kept the spotlight on the clerk by frequently repeating Trump’s complaints.
Breitbart
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November 3, 2023
A Breitbart headline reading: Conniption in Court: Gasps as Breitbart Exposé on Trump New York Judge’s Clerk Takes Center Stage
NewsMax
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November 3, 2023
A NewsMax headline reading: Judge Blasts Trump Lawyers for Attacking Staff
NewsMax
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November 3, 2023
New York Post
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November 15, 2023
A New York Post headline reading: Trump seeks mistrial in 'tainted' $250M civil fraud case — citing judge's 'overwhelming' bias
The Epoch Times
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December 7, 2023
A The Epoch Times headline reading: NY Judge Argues Against Trump Suit, Says Relationships Between Judge and Staff 'Sacrosanct'
With the attention from Trump’s backers came threats and abuse — a torrent that compelled Greenfield to tighten security at home and avoid public transportation.
When transcribed, the harassing voice-mail messages left for Greenfield covered more than 275 single-spaced pages.
Those concerned about the impact of Trump’s incendiary and often inaccurate messages have long sought ways to limit his reach. Cable news networks stopped airing his speeches live. Social media companies adopted new rules to slow the spread of false information. The targets of his bogus election conspiracy theories sued him and his proxies.
Perhaps the most significant move to limit Trump’s audience came after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol: bans on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, blocking him from some of the most influential social media platforms of the era.
And yet, three years later, a Washington Post analysis shows how those efforts have failed.
Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump is as potent a political force as ever, with an army of amplifiers ensuring that his messages — true or untrue — reach a broad swath of the American public. He is set to face President Biden in November, with Trump running roughly even in national polls.
When Trump was initially suspended from the major social media platforms, he issued a statement: “We will not be SILENCED!”
He then created his own social media platform, Truth Social, where he would never be banned and which would allow him to profit financially from his own messages.
Former president Donald Trump is reflected in a mirror as he speaks to supporters in Laconia, N.H., on the day before the New Hampshire Republican primary. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Truth Social was estimated to have 5.4 million website visits in the United States in March, with another 800,000 on its app. By comparison, X, which was formerly known as Twitter, claimed more than 200 times that, with over 1 billion visits. Facebook is estimated to have had 3 billion visits in the same period, according to audience tracking firm Similarweb. Even though Trump has now been reinstated on the larger platforms, he has stuck with Truth Social, a platform that gives him greater freedom but a far more limited reach.
Yet despite its relatively small user base, Truth Social is influential because it sustains the networks of MAGA influencers, culture warriors and election deniers who power the right-wing media and guide the rhetoric and policies of many Republican elected officials. It directly connects Trump to influencers with enormous networks and audiences outside the platform, The Post’s analysis found.
Press Enter to skip to end of carousel
How Trump has become angrier and more isolated on Truth Social
Here on his company’s social network Trump is offering followers an intimate view of what his second term could look like: isolated, vitriolic and vengeful.
End of carousel]
The Post analyzed 14,101 of Trump’s posts from the day he announced his presidential campaign on Nov. 15, 2022, through March 15, 2024, including 7,716 original text posts as well as reposts and image-only posts. He posted to Truth Social, where he now has 6.96 million followers, an average of 29 times a day over that period.
Those messages were in turn shared by followers with wildly popular Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, podcasts and cable news shows, some of which reach tens of millions of people. The Post’s analysis focused on nearly 200 right-wing political influencers who have active accounts on Truth Social and other social media sites.
“The people around Trump know better than anybody how to spread a message,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump senior adviser and influential podcaster, said in an interview. They also benefit personally from their role.
Supporters of former president Donald Trump try to get his photo as he walks out to announce his bid for president at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
By “recirculating golden nuggets from Trump, influencers provide the bonding of this media ecosystem,” said Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law School professor who has long studied propaganda. “The more outrageous and trolling of the libs it is,” added Benkler, “the more attractive it is for those who want to make money and get credibility inside the political community for being a true believer.”
Trump recently praised Truth Social for its effectiveness. “When I put out a statement or message, it is SPREAD all over the place, fast and furious. EVERYBODY SEEMS TO GET WHATEVER I HAVE TO SAY, AND QUICKLY,” he wrote on the platform in early April.
Shannon Devine, spokesperson for Truth Social, said in a statement that “since users can express themselves on Truth Social without censorship and without their message being filtered through biased media outlets, it’s unsurprising that Donald Trump would use the platform or that people would spread his statements elsewhere.” The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s biggest amplifiers include well-known political figures and media organizations, as well as those who have built their brands almost entirely based on their habitual echo of the former president’s words, The Post’s analysis found.
Influencers such as conservative radio and TV host Mark Levin, former Trump adviser and media commentator Sebastian Gorka, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, and online personalities such as Philip Buchanan, who posts using the handle Catturd, regularly share Trump’s Truth Social posts within the platform and amplify his messages to their massive followings off it. Levin, Gorka, Flynn and Catturd each boast over a million followers on X, and Levin and Gorka host popular podcasts. Levin, Flynn and Buchanan did not respond to requests for comment. Gorka responded by saying, “You are scum and a hack. Go to Hell.”
Sebastian Gorka greets supporters on the first day of CPAC on March 2, 2023, in Fort Washington, Md. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Former Trump national security adviser and retired three-star Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn greets visitors during the ReAwaken America Tour on Oct. 21, 2022, in Manheim, Pa. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Trump uses Truth Social to promote his campaign and personal brand, attack political rivals and solicit donations. He also makes false claims of election fraud, spreads far-right conspiracy theories and hurls vitriol at the judges, witnesses and prosecutors involved in his court cases. Posts that make claims of election interference, discuss his court cases or include aggressively insulting language, tend to get the most attention. Five of Trump’s 10 most reposted messages involve election denial.
Early in his campaign, almost all of Trump’s election-denial posts focused on the 2020 presidential race. But after his first indictment in April 2023, Trump began alleging that prosecutors, by charging him, were interfering in the 2024 election. Around the time of his June indictment for mishandling classified documents, his posts on alleged 2024 election interference began to outnumber claims of 2020 election fraud, a trend that continued throughout the year, the Post analysis found.
On Aug. 14, when Trump was indicted in Georgia, he posted three messages equating the indictment with election interference. “THOSE WHO RIGGED & STOLE THE ELECTION WERE THE ONES DOING THE TAMPERING, & THEY ARE THE SLIME THAT SHOULD BE PROSECUTED,” he wrote in his typical all-caps style.
His language was repeated dozens of times in the two following days on right-wing media, podcasts and television. Internet personality Catturd posted a screenshot of Trump’s post to Twitter an hour later, where it garnered 150,000 views. That afternoon, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) wrote on Facebook and Truth Social that the justice system was rigged against Trump, ending the post with an allegation of “election interference!”
The phenomenon is a “steroidal version of political messaging,” according to Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at NewsNation and a former political editor at Fox News. “Trump says or does something egregious and the people who are currying favor with him say, ‘Well, let’s workshop this,’ and they share his message on their own account, but add their own twist.”
One of the reasons Trump has not regularly posted on X is that he wants to create and keep financial value for his Truth Social site, which he carefully tracks, according to people close to him who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
He has relentlessly tried to promote it, telling his advisers that he wants to break news on the platform to bring in more users. That focus paid off with an early, heady valuation of the company that peaked at more than $10 billion in late March, though shares in parent company Trump Media and Technology Group have fallen sharply since then.
Supporters use their phones during a rally in Erie, Pa., on July 29. (Dustin Franz for The Washington Post)
Trump has posted on X only once since leaving the Oval Office — his mug shot last year from an Atlanta jail, where he was booked on charges of trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
But “even though Trump had been kicked off Twitter, people like me can get out Trump’s message on Twitter,” said Mike Davis, a former Senate aide who helped guide the confirmation of Supreme Court justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Davis, who founded the Article III Project, a judicial advocacy organization, is a frequent podcast guest on shows hosted by influencers such as Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, Jack Posobiec and Bannon. He estimates that he’s done over 3,000 media appearances, “and that’s in addition to constant social media and writing opinion pieces defending Trump.”
Davis said that being kicked off social media is galvanizing for conservatives, and he would know. He has been suspended from Twitter five times. But each time, “it was the best thing ever, because then I would go on Fox News and talk about how I was being censored and that would build a bigger audience.”
An ideal testing ground
The day before the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Bannon hosted a “force amplifier” event for influencers to discuss the most effective ways to support Trump’s causes.
Truth Social is an ideal testing ground, Bannon said, because it provides a way to test a message among a relatively small group that can then pass along the most effective lines to a wider audience.
“This entire industry is predicated upon the Trumps of the world creating compelling content daily,” said Bannon. “From YouTube to Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, the whole thing. People are making businesses and careers out of his content.”
A radio show is live-streamed as supporters of Donald Trump gather to watch election results following the presidential primaries on March 12 in Smyrna, Ga. (Megan Varner/For The Washington Post )
On July 27, new charges against Trump in the mishandling classified documents case were filed by special counsel Jack Smith. The following day, Trump wrote three posts on Truth Social referencing the “weaponization” of the Department of Justice or FBI, including one post that garnered over 8,400 reposts and 29,000 likes. The language quickly found its way off Truth Social.
“People are not stupid,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said that night on Sean Hannity’s show, which typically reaches 2.3 million people. “As a whole, they are starting to understand that the weaponization of the justice system is full throttle right now.”
“This morning, I joined Fox and Friends to discuss the illegal weaponization of the DOJ against Joe Biden’s top political opponent,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) posted on her Facebook page, which has 360,000 followers, that afternoon.
Newsmax posted a video to its YouTube channel, which has 2.2 million subscribers, promoting an interview with former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, who said the Biden administration had “weaponized the justice system in a shameful and disgraceful way.” (A Newsmax spokesperson said the network covers both sides of Trump’s trials. Guilfoyle said that the “censorship of President Trump is un-American, a total assault on the First Amendment.”)
Despite his frequent public complaints about how Fox treats him, Trump is also still amplified by its major prime time shows. The night he posted about the Georgia indictments, guests on the popular Hannity, “Jesse Watters Primetime” and “Fox News @ Night” shows, cited the indictments as evidence of election interference.
“For mainstream outlets, it’s the laziest kind of rage revenue because TV producers and web editors go out to find the posts that online rage merchants have already made,” said Stirewalt, who is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “And then you can bring it back to your more mainstream audience and say: ‘Aren’t you enraged by how enraged they are?’”
From anonymity to influencer
Some of the former president’s biggest boosters have built their identities almost entirely online, with no credentials beyond their instinct for amplifying his words.
Philip Buchanan, a 59-year-old living in the panhandle of Florida, is the person behind the social media personality Catturd. Buchanan began tweeting in 2018 as a so-called “Reply Guy,” someone with a small social media following who communicates primarily in the comments section of prominent users. Today, his X account boasts 2.4 million followers, including former Fox host Tucker Carlson, billionaire X owner Elon Musk, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Trump.
Buchanan, who is behind the social media personality Catturd, has 2.4 million followers of his X account. (Screenshot from social media)
Buchanan’s interactions with Trump highlight how each benefit from the other. Through much of 2020, the Catturd account had featured pandemic-era jabs at Democrats, often with a scatological twist. But after the election, Buchanan — like Trump — became fixated on false claims of a rigged vote. Trump retweeted him three times that November.
More recently, Buchanan posted a screenshot of an April 6 Trump post on Truth Social attacking New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s hush money case. “Trump just violated the gag order and dares the corrupt activist hack judge to put him in jail,” Buchanan wrote on X. He followed up with a flame emoji to express his appreciation for Trump’s stance.
Buchanan, whose identity was revealed by Rolling Stone and confirmed by The Post, has credited his social media fame with changing his financial life. In January, he told Carlson, the former Fox News personality who now hosts a show on X, that he bought a new truck, started a podcast and now sells a line of Catturd-branded merchandise.
A clerk under threat
The public scrutiny of Allison Greenfield began with a Wisconsin man named Brock Fredin, who unearthed the photo of the law clerk with Schumer. Fredin posted the photo on X, using the handle @JudicialProtest, and added a caption asking why she was “palling around with Charles E. Schumer?”
Fredin did not respond to a request for comment.
Days later, Trump took a screenshot of Fredin’s post, added a link to Greenfield’s Instagram account, and pushed the message out to his followers. His campaign sent out an email blast targeting Greenfield minutes later.
Although Trump did not directly threaten Greenfield, he clearly voiced his disapproval to his many followers. Right-wing influencers publicized Greenfield’s cellphone and social media accounts, and she scrambled to hide her personal information and that of her family. Court security directed her to stop taking the subway and instead travel by car.
Judge Arthur Engoron, right, sits on the bench with principal law clerk Allison Greenfield, center, during former president Donald Trump's civil business fraud trial in New York on Nov. 2. (John Taggart for The Washington Post)
Laura Loomer speaks during protests against the indictment of former president Donald Trump outside the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Miami on June 13. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
Greenfield, who is now running to be a Manhattan civil court judge, declined to comment for this piece. But her experience was described in court papers and by Jerry Skurnik, a consultant for her campaign.
Trump’s post resulted in roughly 20-30 calls per day to Greenfield’s personal cellphone and approximately 30-50 messages per day across social media, Linkedln and two personal email addresses, according to court papers. The threats, many of which were sexist and antisemitic in nature, included several death threats.
Loomer was among those who focused attention on Greenfield, sharing Trump’s Truth Social message about the clerk to her nearly 1 million followers on X and proclaiming the case against the former president a “WITCH HUNT.” When reached for comment, Loomer said that “it is important for me and the MAGA base to be Donald Trump’s bullhorn,” a role that she said has only become more crucial since he has been subjected to multiple gag orders.
Once an appellate judge temporarily paused the gag order on Nov. 16, Trump lashed out again at Greenfield and Engoron on Truth Social. “His Ridiculous and Unconstitutional Gag Order, not allowing me to defend myself against him and his politically biased and out of control, Trump Hating Clerk, who is sinking him and his Court to new levels of LOW, is a disgrace,” Trump wrote.
Trump continues to attack several of the judges overseeing his cases, and recently flouted a gag order in his hush money case in New York by lashing out against two potential trial witnesses and the jury.
Trump said he would be “honored” to go to jail for violating the gag order. Instead, in late April, Merchan fined Trump $9,000.
The same day, Trump posted on Truth Social that the judge was “Rigged, Crooked, and above all, and without question, CONFLICTED.”
Loomer shared Trump’s post on X, and Catturd reshared the message to his followers, adding three fire emojis.
RSS Trump has now amplified QAnon-promoting accounts over 800 times on Truth Social](https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/trump-has-now-amplified-qanon-promoting-accounts-over-800-times-truth)
05/23/24
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500x qanon
https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/his-first-year-actively-posting-truth-social-trump-amplified-qanon
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reg deadline?
https://www.alternet.org/truth-social-executives-financial-disaster/
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https://www.mediamatters.org/truth-social/truth-social-employee-promoted-qanon-his-podcast
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/donald-trump-truth-social-finances/
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an 7 22
Former President Donald Trump quietly removed himself from the board of his budding social media venture shortly before it was hit with federal subpoenas "by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury in Manhattan," documents obtained exclusively by The Sarasota Herald-Tribune have revealed.
On Thursday, the Florida newspaper reported that on June 8th, Trump, the then-chairman of Trump Media and Technology Group, joined five other executives – "Kashyap Patel, Trump's former point man in the White House; Scott Glabe, a former assistant to Trump who was counsel for the media company; and Donald Trump, Jr." – in a mass exodus from the organization.
"The SEC served Trump Media and Technology Group with a subpoena on June 27th, according to a regulatory filing," the Herald-Tribune learned. "Trump's media company owns Truth Social, an app similar to Twitter. Trump was banned by Twitter for inflammatory remarks concerning the insurrection."
Correspondent Chris Anderson uncovered another subpoena issued by the Southern District of New York on July 1st, suggesting that a "potential criminal investigation is in progress." He explained that "the investigations appear to be related to a proposed merger between Trump's media company and a blank-check company called Digital World Acquisitions Corp., according to a recent regulatory filing."
What caught the attention of regulators, Anderson wrote, was that Digital World and Trump Media and Technology Group were engaged in "premature" discussions about fundraising for their merger, which is prohibited before a venture officially goes public.
The amount of money in play was not mere chump change, either.
Anderson pointed out that "the merger between the two companies could reportedly mean $1.3 billion in capital and a listing on the stock exchange for the new company, according to the New York Times." He added that Digital World's top brass received concurrent subpoenas.
READ MORE: Trump loyalists move ahead with 'sham' election project designed for voter intimidation: report
"According to Digital World's filing, the grand jury subpoenas served on Trump's company were seeking a 'subset of the same or similar documents demanded in subpoenas to Digital World and its directors," Anderson found. "The SEC's subpoena, according to a filing, seeks 'documents relating to, among other things, Digital World and other potential counterparties for a business transaction involving TMTG.'"
Several unnamed TMTG personnel were also served, and while TMTG said that it "will continue cooperating fully with inquiries into our planned merger and will comply with subpoenas we've recently received, none of which were directed at the company's chairman or CEO," it never acknowledged Trump's departure. It did, however, disclose who some of its leaders are.
"Former California Congressman Devin Nunes is listed as the media company's CEO. A businessman named Phillip Juhan is the company's CFO," Anderson gleaned from the records. "They are now the only two board members listed, both using the same Sarasota office address."
The physical location of TMTG is relatively sketchy too.
READ MORE: 'Anything's possible': Fulton County district attorney foresees potentially subpoenaing Donald Trump
"A visit to the office by the Herald-Tribune on June 27th revealed Trump's company name was not on the registry in the main lobby, nor was there any reference to the name at the office suite itself. There was no receptionist either, just a note to ring the doorbell for assistance," Anderson discovered. "The visit to the office by the Herald-Tribune took place on the same day the SEC served Trump's company with the subpoena."
The absence of Trump's name from the building's roster – as well as the opacity behind why TMTG chose Sarasota – only adds to the curiousness of the circumstances, Anderson noted.
"It is still not known why Trump selected Sarasota as home to his company, though it is close proximately to Rumble, the video media platform company used by Truth Social," Anderson wrote. "Rumble is located on Longboat Key, 11 miles from Trump Media's headquarters."
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an 2 22
Many tech programs, from social media to browsers to business networking apps, are free to use — even if they try to entice users into paying for a premium account with premium features. But one platform that may not be free, according to The Focus, is former President Donald Trump’s new social media platform Truth Social.
Right-wing have media have been hyping Truth Social as a MAGA alternative to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram — one that, they insist, will be fair to MAGA Republicans, unlike those other platforms. Truth Social, according to The Guardian, is scheduled to go live on Monday, February 21.
The Focus’ Bruno Cooke reports, “Truth Social doesn’t currently appear on the Apple Store or Google Play Store, although former U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be active on a beta version of the app…. Ahead of its launch, those tempted to join the Truth Social app would do well to know (that) username reservation seems to cost money in the form of a donation, although joining the wait-list is free.”
Cooke goes on to describe what the registration process is like with Truth Social. Users, Cooke reports, are “required to enter your first and last names, an e-mail address and a mobile phone number.”
“The mobile number is required, although the accompanying text includes the sentence ‘if you would prefer to donate online without providing your phone number, click here,’ with a link to a similar webpage asking for donations,” Cooke explains. “The question is: why redirect people to a donation page as an alternative to providing a phone number? The answer appears to be a donation is required to join the Truth Social app.”
Cooke adds, “After submitting a valid name, e-mail address and phone number, the webpage redirects you to theNational Republican Senatorial Committee’s (NRSC’s) WinRed page to reserve your username…. Truth Social allows users to join the app waiting list for free, but it doesn’t let you reserve a username. To do that, you have to make a donation to the NRSC.”
Cooke reports that although the “exact figure you need to pay to gain access to the app isn’t clear,” reporting in the Daily Dot “suggests it is $35.”
“However,” Cooke writes, “The Daily Dot alsoappears to have managed to reserve a username for as little as $1.”
The Truth Social platform will be the first product of Trump’s new tech company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which is separate from the Trump Organization, which he took over in the early 1970s. According to The Guardian,TMTG merged with Digital World Acquisition Corp. “at a valuation of $875 million” in October 2021.
“If Truth Social does cost money to sign up when it finally launches this month,” Cooke notes, “it would be one of a small number of social media apps to do so. Most are free to join and make their money from advertisers.”
off bs
Scott L. Glabe is the Senior Official Performing the Duties of Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans (PLCY). In this capacity, he serves as the principal policy advisor to the Secretary; is responsible for DHS-wide policy development, implementation, and strategic planning; and leads a team of dedicated professionals across five sub-offices: Border Security and Immigration; Counter Terrorism and Threat Prevention; Cyber, Infrastructure, Risk and Resilience; International Affairs; and Trade and Economic Security.
Scott concurrently serves as DHS’s first Assistant Secretary for Trade and Economic Security, a portfolio that includes the Department’s Foreign Investment Risk Management staff. As a member of PLCY’s leadership team and as Senior Counselor to the Secretary, Scott has worked to advance Administration priorities and secure the Homeland.
Before joining DHS, Scott served as a Special Assistant to the President at the White House and in several policy and legal roles on Capitol Hill—including Staff Director of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
As an attorney in private practice, Scott specialized in national security matters, including foreign investment reviews and compliance with international trade controls. Earlier in his career, he clerked for a federal judge and deployed to Afghanistan as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
Scott holds aJ.D. from Yale Law School, an M.S. in Defense and Strategic Studies from Missouri State University, and an A.B. in Government from Dartmouth College. A native of Missouri, he resides outside of Washington, DC, with his wife and six children.