The spot where Trump will return his social media is called X

Donald Trump Reinstated from Truth Social in 2018 after his alleged failure to re-register with the New York Post during the 2018 U.S. Senate Insurrection

The former president turned Himself in at the Fulton County jail on Thursday on charges relating to his alleged attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Over the last five months, Trump has faced criminal charges in four separate cases, but the most recent booking was the first and only time his mugshot was taken. He took the opportunity to make his first post on X since January 8th, 2021.

The company’s former management permanently banned him from their platform on that day, due to a risk of further violence by his supporters after they broke into the US capitol.

Donald Trump – who was booted from mainstream social media platforms because of his continued spreading of lies, falsehoods and misleading claims, including incendiary tweets during the violent and deadly insurrection at the Capitol that he inspired and was carried out by his supporters – posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, for the first time since his expulsion from the site.

Rolling Stone reported in January that Trump didn’t want to renewed his contract with Truth Social which was set to expire in June. He posted the picture of his mug shot on Truth Social at 6:30 Thursday evening. He appeared in a video interview on the Tucker Carlson show before the first GOP presidential debate. After leaving Fox News, the former host of his show took his show to the platform.

Musk ran a poll on Nov. 18th, asking if he should bring Trump back. The next day, he declared that he would do so based on the poll’s results. There were around 15 million responses, with 51.8 percent saying yes and 48.2% saying no. The former president implied there was no need for him to come back at the time because of how well Truth Social was doing and because he sees “a lot of problems on Twitter,” according to Bloomberg. He did, however, tell his supporters to vote yes in the poll.

Before reinstating Trump’s account last year, Musk also brought back the accounts belonging to the conservative parody outlet The Babylon Bee, comedian Kathy Griffin, and author Jordan Peterson.

The president was indicted twice for allegedly paying Daniels money to keep her quiet about affairs with other people. After leaving the Manhattan courthouse where he was arrested at the time, Trump’s 2024 campaign released a t-shirt featuring a fake mugshot, since a real one was not taken. The campaign quickly came up with an official t- shirt design with the caption “NEVER SURRENDER” after his real mugshot was released.

Why Trump’s Twitter Return. Why it Could Really Matter: Trump, X marks the spot for his social media return. Why that could really really matter

Musk’s politics — and Twitter’s much larger audience than his own platform — are certainly likely reasons for Trump’s change of heart, especially as he tries to step on the gas in this Republican primary, needing to reach as many people as possible at the push of a button.

It’s just one more way that Trump, during this presidential campaign, has commanded the spotlight. He did not attend the first GOP presidential debate. He attempted instead to counter program with an interview on X with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

With less than 5 months to go until the Iowa caucuses, Trump is the front-runner for the nomination again. He’s leading in primary polls by an average of nearly 40 points with his closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign, on the decline.

If Trump does decide to post more often, it will be a big deal. 6.4 million people follow Donald Trump on his personal platform, Truth Social.

When Trump was on Twitter, he was able to regularly command the news cycle with controversial tweets, keeping his name in the discussion, for good or bad.

Of course, that’s not exactly true when it comes to the broader public. Republicans continue to buy what he is selling, believing the now four indictments against him and 91 total counts in four different cases are all politically motivated.

Source: For Trump, X marks the spot for his social media return. Why that could really matter

Trump, X Marks the Spot for His Social Media Return. Why that could really matter: An opinion piece by NPR/PBS NewsHour’s David Haley

Haley said in the debate that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can’t win a general election that way.”

As unpopular as President Biden is, Trump is viewed even less favorably. A majority of independents in the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll think that Trump has done something illegal, and a lot of them will not vote for him again.

The first indictment in New York was a factor in the 11 point increase.

Unless something is changed, the GOP is about to find out if they can steer clear of the danger next year of losing yet another election in the Trump era.

Despite Twitter’s smaller audience than other platforms, it has had a wide reach with an influential group of users, so much so that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, created Threads, a Twitter replica.

For example, in December, Musk tweeted: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” a reference to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease official — while also taking a dig at transgender activism.

“I don’t see any reason for it,” Trump said via video conference at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting. “There are a lot of problems in Twitter, you see what’s going on. The problems are very bad and they may or may not make it. The engagements are negative. And you have a lot of bots and you have a lot of fake accounts.”

Source: For Trump, X marks the spot for his social media return. Why that could really matter

X and Threads: How Popular is X? Why did Meta Reach 20,000 Million Users in the Last Three Years? A Case Study in Meta’s App Store

His site, as of last year, was estimated to have just 2 million active users. Compare that to Meta’s Threads, which surpassed 100 million users in short order and became the top downloaded app for a time — and to X, which despite Threads’ growth, still has an active monthly user base of 450 million.