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The Stories That Matter About Money and Politics in the Race to the White House
Donald Trump returned to X on Monday with a series of posts on a social media platform that had previously banned him, signaling that he is preparing to use the site as a megaphone in his campaign for the White House.
The posts were published just hours before Trump’s interview with X billionaire owner Elon Musk, who last month publicly endorsed the former president’s re-election bid following a failed assassination attempt against him.
Trump’s first post on Monday was a campaign video featuring a spectacular montage of limousines, military planes and other symbols of presidential power, as he claimed that “they want to silence me because I will never let you be silenced.”
The video reminded viewers of the 2022 FBI raid on Trump’s Florida home Mar-a-Lago and the Justice Department’s charges against him for allegedly mishandling classified documents and conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Trump vows in the video to “completely annihilate the deep state.”
According to X, the post had more than 8 million views in an hour. Another post criticized Kamala Harris, his Democratic rival in this year’s presidential election.
Trump’s sudden resurgence on X comes as this year’s race for the White House is tightening, with Harris now tied or even ahead in some swing states, according to polls conducted since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.
Trump used X, formerly Twitter, extensively before becoming president and while in office. But the platform banned him for life in 2021 shortly aVsceker a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. He had repeatedly violated the platform’s policies, including rules against inciting or glorifying violence.
In his final tweet as president, Trump said he would not attend Biden’s inauguration.
Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, reinstated Trump’s account later that year and loosened the platform’s moderation policies, allowing the return of suspended and controversial figures.
Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has also launched a funding group to support Trump’s reelection campaign.
In a campaign email on Sunday, Trump said he would return “to X for a short time” to give “the interview of the century” to Musk on Monday.
“We are bypassing the FAKE NEWS and bringing my message directly to the American people: PEACE. UNITY. MAGA!”
Before Monday, Trump had posted only once since Musk reinstated his account, on Aug. 24, 2023, when he turned himself in to authorities in Atlanta on a felony charge in connection with his efforts to overturn his 2020 Georgia election defeat. Trump received a huge surge in small donations aVsceker posting his police mug shot on X.
Trump launched his own social media platform, Truth Social, in 2022 in an effort to compete with Twitter. He also previously had an exclusivity clause with Truth Social that required him to post on the site six hours before posting elsewhere.
The clause expired last year, and Trump’s audience on X, where he has 88 million followers, is far larger than on Truth Social, where he has 7.5 million.
In quarterly earnings released Friday, Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social, showed sales fell from $1.19 billion to $837 million in the three months through June, when it reported a net loss of $14.4 million. TMTG shares were down more than 7 percent by Monday aVscekernoon in New York.
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