President Joe Biden’s campaign team launched a new account Monday on the last platform anyone would have expected them to use—former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social.
The stream of posts that followed included clips of other GOP presidential hopefuls criticizing President Trump—the clear front-runner for the party’s nomination—and a post asserting his “long record of lying to auto workers.”
“Republicans can’t even agree on a Speaker of the House, so clearly, not every Republican thinks the same,” they told the outlet, adding that they intended to combat “mis- and disinformation” on Truth Social.
“There’s very little ‘truth’ happening on Truth Social, but at least now it’ll be a little fun,” a senior campaign aide said.
The launch has definitely met one of the Biden campaign’s goals; now supporters of the two campaigns are exchanging views.
Within three hours of its first “truth,” the account had amassed just over 4,500 followers, and nearly all of its posts had been “ratioed”—meaning they received more replies than likes or reposts.
The replies were about as complimentary as one might expect on a platform dominated by President Trump’s supporters.
Presidential Race
The 45th president launched Truth Social in February 2022, just over a year after his expulsion from Twitter (now X) following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.Although his X account was restored by the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, last November, President Trump has only posted there once in the months since.
“Election Interference. Never Surrender!” he wrote on Aug. 24 following his arrest in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with his protest of the 2020 election results. The message also included his mug shot, which he has since used to raise funds toward his election campaign.
President Trump has held a commanding lead over the rest of the GOP presidential field for the entirety of the primary season. But recent polling suggests that he is also beating the incumbent president with voters in key swing states.
Notably, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was included as an independent candidate, the former president was projected to win all but one of the six states, with Pennsylvania’s race shifting to a neck-and-neck tie between the 45th and 46th presidents at 39 percent each.
When the poll was conducted, Mr. Kennedy had yet to announce his third-party bid. On Oct. 9, he announced his departure from the Democratic Party and his candidacy as an independent with a speech in Philadelphia. Within hours of that speech, his campaign raked in more than $11 million.