The Truth About Donald Trump's New Social Media Platform

Last week the MAGAverse was abuzz with the announcement of Donald Trump’s long-awaited social media platform, TRUTH social. TRUTH social is set to launch under the umbrella company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). In their 24-page pitch deck, TMTG claims to ‘fight for the First Amendment protections and freedoms of all Americans, protect democracy, and defend capitalism’. (Slide 2. TMTG Company Overview deck)

Quite a rich mission coming from a president that gassed protestors exercising their first amendment rights in order to have the most ridiculous photoshoot in history. But that patriotic bravado is not even the most Trumpy thing about it. The statement is a fraud, just like the man himself. If you take a look at the Terms of Service, you’ll see that their big First Amendment protections are very selective. In fact, they only apply to people that have nice things, in their opinion, to say about them.

Section 7. Prohibited Activities

23. disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site.

That’s definitely how the First Amendment works.

Trump’s goal with TMTG is to provide the conservative alternative to ‘big tech’, whom Republicans claim censor them because of their political views. But that’s not the case. It’s been said repeatedly that the reason for suspending or kicking someone off a platform is because of incessant misinformation and the promotion of violence. In fact, Facebook has been great to the Republican party. Of the top 10 posts on Facebook on the day of writing this, 8 of them are from conservative outlets. That is not censorship.

The above is just a simple example of Facebook’s support for conservative outlets. Here is another, and with the Facebook Papers that have come out this week, it’s even more evident just how deep Facebook’s systemic support of conservative propaganda goes. Facebook’s fear of being labeled with a liberal bias resulted in them sitting on their hands while their algorithms drove people to conspiracy theories, and enabled their platform to be used to organize the insurrection on January 6th.

Trump’s goals for TMTG are lofty. He intends to replace big tech as we know it- competing with Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Disney, CNN, iHeart Media, Amazon Web Services, Stripe, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

Good luck.

This announcement isn’t much of a surprise though. For the last few years, DJT and the GOP have consistently cried censorship when one of their party members gets suspended for spreading misinformation and fomenting violence. It was only a matter of time until they came out with a social media platform of their own.

As if Fox News, OAN, and NewsMax, and Facebook weren’t propagating DJT’s message of victimhood and division enough, he will now have his own networks to spread his propaganda, Big Lie, and whatever else he and the pillow guy come up with next.

Our democracy and institution are already at a breaking point from this man and his MAGA movement. The Big Lie has resulted in not only threats of violence, but acts of violence as well. All for what? So that an elderly man so desperate for praise can claim he wasn’t rejected by America? It’s pathetic and incredibly harmful to our democracy.

After a year of spreading the Big Lie, not a single case alleging widespread voter fraud has been proven in a court of law. It has always been and continues to be MAGA propaganda. There is no other way to categorize it. There has still not been any hard evidence presented in a court of law.

Through all of DJT’s propaganda, Americans’ faith in our institutions, our elections, and our leaders has diminished. This nonsensical tirade he is on is literally degrading the very fabric of our democracy, and it’s being done to preserve his ego. The most cynical piece of all of this is that he and his followers claim to be ‘great American patriots’. Could you imagine what our founding fathers would think if they could witness the attacks on democracy coming from him and his ‘party’?

The GOP can’t even be considered a political party at this point. They aren’t interested in developing, promoting, and passing governing policies to benefit Americans. They are controlled by MAGA, which is now a full-blown cult solely interested in culture wars and opposing any initiative brought up by Democrats, even if the majority of Americans support it. They didn’t even present a policy platform at the 2020 Republican National Convention!

I am concerned about what’s to come. Witnessing MAGA’s desire to stir up culture wars and undermine our institutions has got me feeling quite disheartened. I fear the acceleration of disinformation, hatred, and violence that will come from an unhinged and unregulated network of outlets where DJT can continue to spew his spiteful and unsubstantiated claims aimed at undermining our democracy.

The only way to beat this movement back is to show up at the ballot box and elect representatives that will work to keep our democracy intact- whether they be Republican or Democrat doesn’t matter, they just need to stand up to MAGA. This will only end when candidates realize that tying their buggy to the DJT/MAGA horse will not get them elected.

It is our only hope in the short term, and the first test of this is currently underway in the Virginia gubernatorial race.

---

If you’ve made it this far down, thank you for reading. This wasn’t my favorite piece to write, and I do not intend to always be so pessimistic and hopeless, but once I started writing this I went down a very dark rabbit hole discovering just how shameless the GOP uses social media to promote propaganda and that’s where this piece came from.

I’m thinking of going with a shorter more frequent format, so please subscribe below if you’re interested in following along.

Thanks!