At the end of his term in office, Donald Trump was banned from major online platforms. Little by little, he regained access to all of them. But he largely avoided platform X. That has now changed.
After a long absence, Republican Donald Trump has spoken out again on the platform X. Almost a year after his last post there, the Republican US presidential candidate published a series of posts on his X account.
He started with a campaign video. In it, his path from his first election victory in 2016 to his current presidential candidacy is portrayed as a constant battle against resistance from his political opponents – and as the heroic story of a man who does not let this get him down.
This was followed by several other clips and campaign posts – and advertising for Trump’s planned exchange with X owner Elon Musk on the platform in the German night of Tuesday. The tech billionaire is openly supporting the Republican in the current presidential election campaign.
Donald Trump posted his mug shot in 2023
Trump last posted something on his X account at the end of August 2023. At that time, he used his historic police photo as an opportunity to return to Twitter’s successor platform, X. Trump posted the photo there, which had been taken shortly before in a prison in Atlanta.
The Republican had turned himself in to law enforcement authorities there after charges were brought against him in the state of Georgia in connection with attempted election fraud. Trump is the first former US president to be charged, in multiple cases. And he is the first former US president to appear in prison and be immortalized in a police photograph.
Donald Trump currently has 88 million followers
Previously, there had been more than two and a half years of radio silence on Trump’s account on the platform, which he had used as a key communication channel during his term in office and which passed into the hands of Musk in 2022 and was later renamed. Trump has always had a considerable number of followers there, currently more than 88 million.
The Republican was banned from major online platforms towards the end of his term after his supporters stormed the US Parliament building in Washington on January 6, 2021. In his online messages before and after the Capitol attack, he openly expressed sympathy for the rioters. The platform operators therefore feared that there could be new violence if Trump was not banned – and blocked his accounts.
Trump has now regained access to all major online services. And he has also reported back on several channels. However, he has hardly used X at all so far – although its new owner Musk had it reactivated in autumn 2022. Instead, Trump himself had helped set up a Twitter copy, the Truth Social platform. Trump uses this intensively. However, he has a much smaller reach there with around 7.5 million subscribers.
