Report: Trump Is Blowing a Gasket Over His Joke of a Social Media Network | Vanity Fair
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Truth Social has been a complete disaster and the ex-president seems to know it. 
By Bess Levin
March 7, 2022 
When Twitter banned Donald Trump for inciting a violent insurrection, the former president had two choices. The first was to accept that he no longer had a platform through which to terrorize the human race with every thought that came into his head and move on. The second was to throw a conniption fit over his First Amendment rights having supposedly been violated, and to use the opportunity to engage in some typical grifter-y behavior, such as launching a Twitter competitor through a shell company and making money off of his supporters. Obviously, Trump chose the latter, and while the money-making aspect seems to have worked out well for him thus far, the actual social media network is on track to be a bigger flop than Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and the Trump Taj Mahal combined. And despite famously having a very loose grasp on reality, he apparently knows it!
The Daily Beast reports that when he's not praising Vladimir Putin or coming up with ways to start a war between Russia and China, Trump has been incessantly whining about what an embarrassing flop Truth Social has turned out to be. Sources tell The Daily Beast they've heard the ex-president "swearing gratuitously" about the app on the phone and asking "What the fuck is going on" with the social network. Trump has regularly complained about the bad press and "less-than-stellar optics" the rollout has received, and demanded to know why it hasn't immediately become a runaway success, according to reporters Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng.
Of course, that probably has something to do with the platform itself being an unmitigated disaster. On the day it launched, would-be users were reportedly hit with numerous glitches and outrageously long wait times, with some being forwarded to an "access denied" error page. A reporter from Business Insider had to try the initial email-confirmation process five times before being able to create an account. Of the users who were actually able to create accounts, many were told they'd been placed on a wait list of what appeared to be more than 100,000 people. The app went partially dark for more than 12 hours due to "application launch traffic." Its logo is reportedly almost identical to that of another company that existed long before Truth Social hit the scene.
And according to the Daily Beast:
The company's figures for the MAGA social network—while only an estimate based on incomplete data—are…anemic. Trump's own social media platform is doing either worse or the same as other MAGA social sites like Gab—another pro-Trump competitor website that's especially beloved by, well, Nazis—and Gettr, a platform fronted by one of Trump's former top political aides, Jason Miller. SimilarWeb's estimates show a sharp spike of around 2 million daily visits to the site when it first debuted, before traffic dipped to an average of approximately 300,000 visits each day, putting the site on par with Gettr. Meanwhile, the far-right Gab has averaged around 650,000 daily average visits in the same time period. As of Friday, Truth Social was the 72nd most popular free app in Apple's AppStore, a far cry from Facebook (5th) and his formerly beloved Twitter (22), both of which booted the ex-president after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot…. The company estimates that the average visitor to Trump's site stays for just 90 seconds—a far cry from the seven minutes users tend to spend on Gettr and nine minutes spent on Gab.
Probably not helping things is that Trump, who has the attention span of a gnat, has not posted to the app, despite having once sent 200 tweets and retweets in a single day. On the other hand, the share price of the company backing Truth Social is up roughly 60% year-to-date, and it's currently worth about $82.09 after going public at $10. So even though the actual social media company is thus far a cringeworthy joke, it still appears to be lining the ex-president's pockets. Which he probably doesn't have a problem with.
If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.
Why are we so concerned about Trump becoming president again, anyway?
Oh, just the usual 982,576 reasons, plus a new one he gave us over the weekend, which is that if he were in office right now, he'd be trying to start a war between China and Russia. In case you missed that great idea:
At a speech in New Orleans on Saturday night, Trump mused that we could simply apply Chinese flags to our F-22s and then "bomb the s--t out of Russia," setting off a conflict between those two countries. "And then we say, China did it, we didn't do it, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch," Trump said, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post 's Josh Dawsey.
Beyond the sheer insanity of this proposal, experts told the Post that it would likely be illegal. "Using the flag of a neutral state or any other state that is not a party to the conflict is prohibited," said Emory University law school professor Laurie R. Blank. "This idea would bring the U.S. into the conflict (because it would be actually engaging in military operations against Russia) and be in violation of the rule prohibiting the use of the flags, emblems, or insignia of neutral states or states not party to the conflict. It would escalate the conflict dramatically, and the rules on neutrality and neutral states are designed to prevent exactly that."
Meanwhile, in Florida
The state has boldly made a name for itself as the first one in the country to officially come out as anti-vax when it comes to kids. Per WFLA:
At the end of a COVID-19 roundtable held by Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo on Monday, the surgeon general announced the state would be recommending healthy children not receive vaccinations. "The Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children," Ladapo said shortly before the roundtable ended.
While the CDC has said everyone over five should get vaccinated against COVID-19, Florida's stance shouldn't come as a surprise. As a nominee, Dr. Ladapo wouldn't say if he was vaccinated, and he refused to say if the COVID vaccines were effective during his confirmation hearing. Also DeSantis proudly made a scene last week re: high school students wearing masks, a stunt that no doubt scored him points with the anti-everything crowd.
In other DeSantis news…
The Florida governor would rather attack reporters than answer questions about the fact that his state legislature has passed a bill banning classroom conversations about gender identity and sexual orientation in grades K-3 "or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards," i.e., beyond those grades.
Tags
Who is online
429 visitors
Poor Baby!
gee, his participation might have helped out some, but fucking moron trump is probably too stupid to navigate his own social platform.
Trump's only successful business has been selling his name for licensing purposes. Just proves that suckers are born every second.
Couldn't Trump buy an established rightwing site?
that takes real money and his loan company is busy invading ukraine right now.
Yes, and Russian tenants cannot pay rent...
he's probably offering his russian pals pennies on the dollar for those trump tower condos in a blackmail attempt by threatening to turn them over to the DOJ.
A little off topic here -
trump has been publicly fellating that commie autocrat for 2 decades. it's all part of his loan arrangements.
So his site is a diaster. So sad, NOT.
Amazing, another Trump business venture ends as a flaming pile of shit.