Opinion | What the Truth Social Flop Says About Trump – POLITICO

Trump deserves credit for marketing his Twitter account to its Everestian heights. Hes always known how to play to the crowds, titillate them and leave them wanting more. During his first campaign and presidency, even a garden-variety Trump tweet could convulse newsrooms. But that was a function of his front-runner status and later his place in the Oval Office. He drew an enormous audience not because he was Donald Trump tweeting but because he was the tweeting president. The power of the office endowed his tweets with muscle that could move financial markets, bury political careers, inspire death threats against his enemies and make the press snap to attention. But exiled to Mar-a-Lago and denied his social media accounts rendered him just another celebrity squeaking noises from a tiny soapbox. When his profile shrank, he became easier to ignore.

Even so, why didnt the tens of millions of the 89 million who followed him on Twitter or the 74 million who voted for him in 2020 make more of an effort to visit his new address? Blame it on the network effect. If you already have a Twitter account, it takes just a millisecond to click and add another persons feed to your account. But downloading a new app just to follow a single somebody takes mental energy, especially if there arent many other accounts on the app you wish to follow. Trump out of office proved to be as boring as Trump in office was disruptive. Everything were learning about Trumps inability to convene a large-scale audience on Truth Social we learned in miniature from the failure of his mid-2021 blog, which he killed after 29 days. Like most media figures, Trump needs the boost of the network effect provided by Twitter (or CNN or Fox News Channel) to build a mass audience. All by his lonesome, hes just a political carny on a lightly trafficked midway shouting invitations to his freak show.

Plenty of Trumps followers were either agnostic about his tweets or politically hostile to them. Many followed him just to stay in the know or for the hate clicks.

This is not to say you cant build a good business serving mostly Trumpians or mostly conservatives or mostly liberals. But such narrowcasting comes at the expense of winning the largest potential customer base. Twitter wisely places no political litmus tests, real or implied, between aspiring account-holders and an account as long as they promise not to spew bilge from their perch. Everybody is accepted. By appearing exclusionary, Truth Social resigned itself to marginal appeal.

Nothing about Truth Socials disastrous beginnings should surprise us. Donald Trump has proved himself again and again to be a wreck of an entrepreneur. Steaks, his university, water, an airline, casinos, the USFL, a mortgage company, vodka the list reads like a guide on how not to succeed in business. Associating Trump with a new venture has become a business death wish.

Trump is still the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and could well wind up in the White House (assuming hes not behind bars). But theres also evidence that Trump has simply exhausted the Trump meme he invented. Trumps deranged outrage style once contained real entertainment value which explains why moderates and liberals followed him on Twitter even if they wouldnt vote for him. But in his post-presidency and especially in the weeks following the Mar-a-Lago search and investigation, the show has gone stale. Vainly, he has sought to top himself by sharing QAnon-related material on Truth Social, denouncing the FBI like a madman trapped in a bunker, and calling for his reinstatement as the rightful winner of the 2020 election. Hes become a carnival geek biting the heads off of snakes, which can be a fabulous show the first couple of times you see it, but after that, meh. Could todays Trump devise enough fresh outrage to produce even a brief TikTok?

Are there any geek shows left? Send updates to [emailprotected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed has not yet been canceled. RSS is my sort of social media.

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Opinion | What the Truth Social Flop Says About Trump - POLITICO