Donald Trump’s Truth Social Is More of a Mess Than You’ve Heard — Even Melania’s Given Up Posting

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Truth Social is a mess. A month after your friendly neighborhood Mediaite contributing editor first attempted to sign up for the social media platform former President Donald Trump launched to compete with Twitter, I was finally able to create an account, and what I found wandering around the app was even more hilariously bad than I had expected.

The app’s woes have been well-documented: it’s been plagued with a clunky launch, tech problems, a stagnant user base, and an exodus of several of their top executives. Even Trump himself has offered only lackluster support for his own app, posting only one “Truth” — the app’s overly presumptive label for posts — on launch day.

I attempted to create an account on March 14, using my Mediaite email address. I was given a waitlist number of #1,285,472 in the app and a slightly smaller waitlist number by email. I checked the app periodically over the past few weeks and that waitlist number never changed. I received no updates on how much longer I should expect to wait and no notifications when the account was finally able to be created; it just finally worked when I checked again Thursday evening.

Other users complained of similar sign-up issues. Searching “truth social waitlist” on Twitter finds many people lamenting they had waited for a month or more and their waitlist numbers were not changing. Needless to say, that’s not how a waitlist should work; as new users were added, people should have steadily moved up in the list, not stayed the same. A consultant friend of mine sent me screenshots showing that his waitlist number had actually increased over time. It’s a fair conjecture to say that the Truth Social waitlist numbers were totally fabricated to create a perception that over a million people were wanting to join.

So, finally able to create an account, I picked a generic username (@Native_Floridian) and uploaded a photo of my cat for the profile photo. Here’s some of what I found.

As mentioned above, Trump doesn’t even use Truth Social. “That’s all for now,” the app indicates right below Trump’s one and only post, one of the few things about this app that I can unequivocally say does actually constitute a “Truth.”

Donald Trump’s profile on Truth Social. Screenshot dated April 15, 2022.

Former First Lady Melania Trump posted ten “Truths,” all about a month ago, four of which are promoting a “POTUS TRUMP NFT Collection.” She has completely given up on Truth Social since then. It is difficult to determine the exact date of her posts since the app only designates them as “1mo,” presumably meaning one month ago.

Screenshot dated April 15, 2022.

At least Melania tried. Trump’s daughter/rumored favorite child Ivanka Trump doesn’t even have a Truth Social account. Searching for her name brings up fewer than two dozen accounts, several of which exist only to troll her or her father, often with misogynistic content.

One named @IvankasMouth hasn’t posted but has a photo of Trump and Stormy Daniels as the header image;  @IvankaTrumpYou has two posts mocking Ivanka’s Goya Beans photo (“My Dad still feeds me Goya beans before bed #MakeAmericaGreatAgain;” “God damn I fucking love Goya beans.”); the entire @ivankatrump69 timeline consists of anti-Trump content (sharing a photoshopped image of Trump as a toddler riding on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s shoulders, a parody of the Trump campaign logo that says “TRUMP LOST: FUCK YOUR FEELINGS,” etc.) and complaints about some posts being removed; @ivankasunderpants has no posts, only a bio that states the account is “Just here to check out Pravda and all the Trump foamers.”

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump do have accounts, and they post regularly, usually with identical or highly similar posts to what they’re posting on their Twitter accounts. Of course, since Dear Old Dad clearly isn’t using the app it’s not clear whom they expect to impress and they both have much larger followings and higher level of engagement on Twitter. As expected, the majority of the replies are unquestioningly pro-Trump, getting very little engagement as they declare the Trump Bros. posts to be “TRUTH” and laud them for fighting the fake news media, ad nauseam.

These Trump offspring accounts — both Don Jr. and Eric’s relentless promotion of Trump (including their father and their family brand) and the fake Ivanka trolls — are illustrative of the mind-numbing lameness of Truth Social.

Whether you love Trump or hate him, there’s just no reason to check out Truth Social. Overall, the pro-Trump content is duplicative of that available on other platforms. Trump himself isn’t posting. He isn’t even posting the press releases he’s been sending out since being excommunicated from Twitter. Those statements are emailed to supporters and media and spokesperson Liz Harrington posts them on both Twitter and Truth Social — again, no exclusive content on Truth Social and no reason for even the most ardent Trump supporter to check for posts.

And the trolls are anemic and unoriginal, most of them giving up after a single-digit number of posts because there’s no entertainment in trying to tell jokes to an empty room.

There is a significant amount of content on Truth Social that originates from a handful of media outlets, but the posts are largely automated, aggregating from the RSS feeds on the outlets’ websites. Fox News disclaimed any involvement with the @FoxNews Truth Social account, even though the app indicated that it was a verified account. “We are not on Truth Social,” a spokesperson bluntly told Axios when asked about the account.

Two months after launch, Truth Social gives off a strong “not ready for prime time” vibe. The app has been thoroughly mocked for  blatantly ripping off a lot of Twitter’s design — verified Truth Social users get a red check, instead of Twitter’s blue check, for example — but some of the core functions are still not operational. Clicking on the envelope for private messaging (that’s in the bottom right corner of the app screen, just like on Twitter) does not take you to private messages, only an empty page with a message that “[a] new direct messaging experience will be available soon. Please stay tuned.”

Screenshot dated April 15, 2022.

The app struggles to attract the user’s attention even from the first moments after creating an account. You have to follow at least two accounts in order to proceed forward, and the app recommends “Suggested Profiles,” which they describe as “Here are 50 popular profiles. Please follow as many as you want, the more, the merrier!”

The first two recommended accounts are, unsurprisingly, @realDonaldTrump and @truthsocial. (Yes, even though he could have had any username he wanted, like @DonaldTrump or @PresidentTrump, he went with the exact same username he had on Twitter. He’s not bitter, nope. We totally believe he doesn’t mind being banned from Twitter.)

The remainder of the top ten I was shown are a comedy account that seems to mostly share pro-Trump memes is #3, then the not-actually-operated by Fox News @FoxNews at #4, Donald Jr. at #5, an account that posts videos purporting to be banned ads at #6, Breitbart News #7, Dan Bongino #8, @PelosiStockTracker #9, and @FOXSports (unverified and presumably not authorized by Fox) #10.

Poor @EricTrump doesn’t make the list until #11, just barely beating out @FakeHunterBiden. The rest of the list includes a handful of Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo, bots posting for accounts like the Babylon Bee, and internet content aggregators (@HotChicksGolfing, @IdiotsInCars, @CuteAnimals, etc.).

Kyle Rittenhouse has an account, but hasn’t posted anything since sharing a few posts from Jenna Ellis over a week ago, in comparison to his far more active and engaged Twitter account. Bongino is a fairly prolific poster on Truth Social, but he’s just as active on Twitter, so again, what’s the point of Truth Social?

One final observation: despite having no information in my profile and posting no “Truths,” I somehow gained 15 followers, appearing to be random users.

I’ll stick with Twitter.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.