Why Donald Trump’s Social Network Is in So Much Trouble

Long gone are the days of Donald Trump shitposting his way to the presidency. It’s been almost three years since his Twitter administration climaxed with an insurrectionary riot at the U.S. Capitol, resulting in his multiyear exile from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube (and, more importantly, a ton of legal peril). Over the past year, Trump has been granted the ability to return to all these networks—but aside from one post–mug shot campaign promotion, Trump hasn’t resumed posting on his “beautiful Twitter account,” and the engagement on his Facebook account, constrained by guardrails from the platform to hopefully prevent more Capitol riots, is way down from his pre–Jan. 6 numbers.

But the Poster President is still unleashing his id online every day. To find the real meat (deranged conspiracy theories, insults to the judiciary that earned him a gag order last month), you have to visit Truth Social, the platform Trump founded after his Twitter exile. Although you might not have the opportunity to do so for much longer.

Stories about Truth Social’s business troubles have proliferated ever since late 2021, when the platform’s parent company brought in a $300 million fundraising haul through a planned merger with a SPAC known as Digital World Acquisition Corp. But things do seem rather dire this time: According to a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure filed Monday, in advance of the SPAC’s attempt to go public: “As of June 30, 2023, and December 31, 2022, management has substantial doubt that [Truth Social parent company Trump Media & Technology Group] will have sufficient funds to meet its liabilities as they fall due.” The filing further noted the platform’s potential need for “additional bridge funding,” depending in part on when company debt-holders decide to call in their loans. (Already, many of the SPAC’s deep-pocketed investors are backing out of their monetary commitments.) Why the gap? Because … Truth Social just ain’t raking much in, having earned only $2.3 million in revenue though the first two quarters of 2023—and losing about 10 times that amount, on net, from January through June. The Trump Media & Technology Group also just doesn’t have as much cash on hand as it used to, and high interest rates are ballooning its persistent liabilities. Naturally, such news traveled quickly after getting picked up by the Hollywood Reporter, inviting the ire of DWAC executives who demanded that the outlet retract its story due to an incorrect calculation: Truth Social has lost only $60.5 million since its February 2022 launch, not $73 million, thank you very much!

Still, even the SEC filing admits, “there can be no assurances that TMTG will not also fail.” There have already been close calls: According to the Associated Press, TMTG and DWAC were supposed to have completed their merger by September, but the latter’s shareholders agreed to postpone the completion date another year. There’s another reason that’s not great for Trump: He’s reportedly bound by an internal company agreement to prioritize Truth Social over Twitter as his campaign messenger of choice, at least until the SPAC merger is complete. Which would suggest two bad options ahead for the Donald: either abide by said agreement until next September (which will require borrowing or earning a lot more money, preferably from sources that are not ads for precious metals or quack medicine) or let Truth Social fail sooner and admit that his genius mind allowed yet another business to crash. Sad!

In light of the remarkable devotion of Trump’s MAGA base, the perennial candidate could probably take the latter route and blame Truth Social’s accounting woes on, say, Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes—or whomever! And then, no longer bound by his Truth Social commitment, the former president can break free of that network’s piddling user numbers and post his way back to glory elsewhere.

Except … where could Trump even go after Truth Social?

Facebook’s terms for Trump’s account prevent him from making the type of posts where he, say, encourages his followers to harass federal judges. The universe of alternative far-right social networks (Gettr, Parler, Gab) that was supposed to persist beyond the Trump era is all but dead. And while Twitter’s transformation under Elon Musk (as well as a former Trump administration adviser, CEO Linda Yaccarino) has made it a far friendlier network to right-wingers and bigots, the X era has seen certain high-power users coalesce around a new, non-Trump—but in certain ways Trumpian—main character: Musk, who’s happily used his resources to (try to) boost Trump rivals like Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Could Trump take a leaf from the fake news media and pivot to video? Well, to the chagrin of Gen Z Republicans, there’s a very low chance he’ll ever get on TikTok—you know, the Chinese-owned app that Trump, as president, did his damnedest to boot from United States borders altogether. Instagram photos and Reels? He definitely gets a lot of views on those, but he’ll probably be as constrained there as he is on Facebook, considering that the two share a parent company. Could he double down on his YouTube account? Maybe, but ultimately, the fact is he’s always traveled further with bizarrely formatted text posts than he has with rehearsed video addresses. What about Rumble, one of the few newish right-wing platforms to find mainstream acceptance, having partnered with the Republican National Committee to stream party debates? Well, viewership numbers there still aren’t super, and besides, Rumble is so toxic to the majority of Americans—thanks to its flourishing white nationalist information ecosystem—that it’s unlikely to ever recover from the flagging growth that has hobbled its business all year.

It seems, like every other netizen, Trump is stuck looking for a good social network to set up shop. (Stars: They’re just like us!) Funnily enough, however, his social media limbo might be most beneficial to his campaign and to the Republican Party, whose leaders would rather not have Trump reemerge as a Twitter-style main character again—after all, if enough Americans are reminded of and repulsed by the kinda stuff that mostly stays locked to Truth Social, it’s very possible Trump will lose his slim electoral polling leads and galvanize more #resistance liberals to vote against him. Maybe then his social media revival will be contingent on a current Supreme Court case that will decide whether public officials (like onetime President Donald Trump) can block their critics on social media. Who do the justices Trump appointed think they are, to think they can tell the former president how to post?