Donald Trump has finally broken his silence on X, posting a picture of his mugshot and a defiant message about never surrendering

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Former President Donald Trump has finally broken his silence on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, posting a picture of his mugshot and a message to his more than 85 million followers.

Trump, a prolific tweeter during his presidency, hadn’t posted since January 2021. His account was suspended that month after right-wing extremists stormed the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to overturn the result of the November 2020 election.

But Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account in November 2022 after buying the social-media platform and polling its users on whether the former president should be allowed to return. Trump, however, hadn’t posted until now, instead putting updates on Truth Social, his own platform.

“The bottom line is, no, I am not going back to Twitter,” Trump told Fox News in April 2022 after Musk announced the acquisition.

Trump surrendered to law enforcement in Georgia on Thursday evening on charges alleging he conspired to illegally overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

His mugshot, the first of an ex-president charged with crimes, was released shortly after.

In his first post on X in more than 30 months, Trump shared his mugshot and a caption, which read: “Never surrender.” He also added a link to his website, which redirected visitors to a page asking for donations to the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee. The webpage similarly featured a picture of his mugshot, with accompanying text alleging that Trump was placed in custody “despite having committed no crime.”

Trump uploaded the post on Thursday evening. By 5 a.m. ET — just over seven hours after it was posted — the photo had been viewed 83 million times, X said. It also had more than 200,000 reposts and had been liked nearly 850,000 times.

Prior to that, Trump’s last post was on January 8, 2021, when he said: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”