President Donald Trump is posting on the internet with a velocity and ferocity far beyond that of his first term, surprising aides with predawn messages fired off at a blistering pace.
The data portrays an influencer-in-chief whose reach has grown vastly larger than during his first term.The heightened volume is not just the handiwork of Trump’s thumbs; he now has a team of aides who help him post throughout the day.And many of his posts leap to other platforms with help from an active base of administration leaders, right-wing influencers and MAGA media figures who amplify them far and wide.
His prolific posts also allow him to communicate directly to his fans, without any filtering from media outlets.
At 7:22 a.m.on Memorial Day, he commemorated the day of mourning for American service members killed in the line of duty with a 172-word stem-winder written in all capital letters: “Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane.”
And on Saturday night, he reposted an outrageous item to his nearly 10 million followers saying former president Joe Biden had been executed in 2020 and replaced by a “soulless mindless” robotic clone.
“President Trump is the most transparent president in history and is meeting the American people where they are to directly communicate his policies, message, and important announcements,” said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers.“President Trump was elected in a historic landslide victory and even won the popular vote — no further validation is needed.”
The 78-year-old president has made social media into a daily habit more than a decade long, shaping policy, stirring outrage and capturing global attention largely from his phone.But his posting now overshadows even the most explosive Twitter days of his first presidency: He tweeted 14 times on his biggest-posting day in early 2017, the data show — a tenth of the 138 posts his Truth Social account sent on a single day this March.
That account has fewer than 10 million followers, a fraction of the 105 million he has on X, the site formerly known as Twitter now owned by billionaire Elon Musk — but it has not diminished his reach.
“His messaging moves in real time from Truth to X, and it spreads just as far if not farther on X than it did when he was tweeting himself on the platform,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and co-director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University who studies social media.
What’s more, Truth Social’s almost exclusively congenial audience insulates the president from negative responses.“His current social media behavior suggests that with time he has been pulled even farther into his own echo chambers,” Linvill said.
“Truth Social gives him complete and constant positive feedback.”
A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal details about Trump’s social media use, said the president relies on a small team to keep his online operation running.
Dan Scavino, an adviser who has for years posted memes and videos for Trump, continues to manage most of Trump’s social media presence as White House deputy chief of staff.Trump often dictates the wording of posts to Natalie Harp, an aide who trails him with a small printer and fresh copies of news reports.During the campaign, filmmakers for the documentary series “Art of the Surge” captured Trump dictating Truth Social posts as Harp and Scavino typed away.
Trump’s account runs through a separate process from that of the White House, which employs its own digital strategy team.Senior staffers, however, sometimes call Trump when they have a more formal statement they would like him to promote.
But often, Trump posts — or, in Truth Social lingo, “truths” — his messages himself, surprising his staff in the middle of the night and early in the morning, when he is watching the news on TV, the senior official said.
Those late-night and predawn missives sometimes step into unusual territory.At 3:29 a.m.
on May 5, 2024 — the Sunday morning before the 12th day of his New York criminal trial — Trump posted a long “truth” decrying the idea of “abortion in the 7th, 8th, or 9th month or, execution after birth.”
More recently, in February, at 2:58 a.m.on a Monday, Trump embraced a favorite target just hours before a Group of Seven leader summit, posting a quote from Bill O’Reilly’s YouTube show, “No Spin News,” saying he had “done more in his first month than any other President in history.Who do you think was second? George Washington!”
Trump’s allies have said his rampant posting shows how the president is always thinking, transparent with his constituents and eager to stay in the loop of a fast-moving political environment.But no president has shown such devotion to constantly broadcasting his thoughts while also serving as commander in chief.
Trump has used his Truth Social account to post videos of his golf swing, amplify his supporters’ praise, compare himself to a king and urge Americans to “BE COOL!”
Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, did not respond to a request for comment.Trump Media sued The Post alleging defamation in 2023, saying the news organization had reported incorrectly on allegations relating to its early financing.The case is ongoing.
Trump has used his Truth Social megaphone to boost baseless claims and move the needle on foreign policy.Last Tuesday, he posted that Vladimir Putin should realize “REALLY BAD” things would have happened to Russia without his involvement; that Canada was “considering the offer” of becoming the 51st state in exchange for the protection of a proposed “Golden Dome” air defense system; and that a conspiracy theory involving Biden and an “AUTOPEN” was the second-biggest scandal in American history.
(The first was “the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020.”)
But he has also spent time on less consequential affairs, including attacking perceived political and media foes and squabbling with pop-culture icons.One Friday last month, he posted that Bruce Springsteen was a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker” and that Taylor Swift, who just finished the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, was “no longer ‘HOT.’” On Wednesday, his account posted a meme at 10:30 p.m.saying Trump is “on a mission from God & nothing can stop what is coming.”
During his first presidential campaign and presidency, Trump’s focus on Twitter won him the attention of journalists, news junkies and the platform’s other obsessives.He was booted from the platform after the U.S.
Capitol riot on Jan.6, 2021, and reinstated by Musk in 2022, but he uses X only sparingly: Since the inauguration, his profile has tweeted about 100 times, mostly rehashes from his Truth Social account.
Trump allies have said he focuses his energy on Truth Social now because he owns most of its parent company, Trump Media, and stands to gain from its success.His stake in the company is worth more than $2 billion.
And Trump has seemed to relish his online influence.Trump [said on a podcast appearance](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/01/trump-social-media-influencer-cabinet/) during the campaign that an aide had told him he is “the biggest of all the influencers.” Trump’s lawyers said in a [filing](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.396451/gov.uscourts.txnd.396451.62.0.pdf) Wednesday in [their lawsuit involving CBS News](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/29/trump-cbs-news-60-minutes-lawsuit/d3c269ee-3cc4-11f0-912d-d5f4792db3e4_story.html) that “Trump is a prolific content creator who directly communicates with his tens of millions of followers on social media, a media brand in his own right.”
Despite Truth Social’s smaller following, the platform plays an important role as a feeder for pro-Trump talking points that MAGA influencers can then widely promote, said Claire Wardle, an associate professor at Cornell University who studies social media.
“It’s a very different information environment than in 2017, incredibly splintered but just as powerful,” she said.“It’s easy to dismiss it if you don’t spend time on Truth Social.But for the people who do, they absolutely are seeing those posts and seeing the same talking points amplified and repeated on all the pages and [newsletters] and podcasts they look at and listen to and subscribe to.”
“He wouldn’t just be on Truth Social if he wasn’t making an impact,” she added.
Trump has made that point himself, [saying](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/07/trump-once-reconsidered-sticking-with-truth-social-now-hes-stuck/) in 2022, “When I put out a Truth, it is all over the place.” He has relentlessly promoted the site, calling it “[HOT, HOT, HOT](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/109863183734292588)” and [asking visitors](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/12/trump-musk-truth-social-sale/) at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, whether they’ve created an account.
Beyond any financial or political strategy, Linvill suspects there may be another factor driving Trump’s social media obsession: his desire for self-validation.
“It’s shocking to me the amount of time that many billionaires spend on social media.
These people could be ice skating on the top of yachts, and instead they’re tapping away on their screens,” he said.“They do it because social media is really good at what it does, which is keep you addicted.
People love positive feedback; it’s a dopamine hit.And Trump loves positive feedback more than many.”.
