With Truth Social, Trump Has Official Mouthpiece and a Channel for Revenue
The New York Times
The president’s company, Trump Media & Technology Group, represents a clear mingling of his official duties and his business interests.
Anyone who wants to keep up with President Trump’s views knows to go to his Truth Social account. There, one finds his reasoning on a panoply of issues, including military strikes in Somalia, tariffs on Canada and Mexico, relations with Russia, the causes of a deadly aircraft collision, American ownership of the Gaza Strip and a budget bill now before Congress.
On Wednesday, for instance, after initial cease-fire talks between the United States and Russia over the war in Ukraine, he employed the account to attack Ukraine’s leader. “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start,” the president’s post said. “Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
In some ways, such statements are akin to how Mr. Trump turned Twitter, now called X, into his megaphone in his first term, when administration officials declared his posts to be official White House communications.
But one major difference stands out: Mr. Trump is the biggest shareholder in Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that owns Truth Social, and so stands to benefit directly if his posts drive traffic to the site. Even though he has put his Trump Media shares in a trust controlled by his oldest son, the president remains the main draw to the platform that is the company’s signature product.
His Truth Social posts are only one example of the intersection of Mr. Trump’s official role and Trump Media. On Wednesday, in an extraordinary move, Trump Media sued a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who is overseeing multiple criminal investigations of Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president whom Mr. Trump has described as a one of his “great friends.”
The lawsuit, which accused the judge of illegally censoring right-wing voices on social media, appeared to be an effort to pressure the foreign judge as he considered whether to arrest Mr. Bolsonaro.
