Trump's Truth posts mix wild conspiracies with market-moving policies
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Donald Trump talks on the phone prior to the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome on May 5, 2024. Photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of jarring juxtapositions: major trade policy announcements and presidential nominations broken up by bizarre conspiracies and personal boasts.
Why it matters: The president's words matter, whether he's moving markets with tariff threats or spreading unfounded conspiracies about his political rivals, and the White House has mimicked Trump's bellicose online persona.
- Emboldened in his second term, Trump has surrounded himself with conspiracy theorists and posts without restraint.
Driving the news: The president late on Saturday shared an outlandish conspiracy from another user who said that former President Biden had been "executed in 2020" and was replaced by clones or robots.
- Trump shared the post to his nearly 10 million followers with no context.
- In another strange post Wednesday, Trump shared a meme of himself walking down a dark city street with all-cap text that read, "HE'S ON A MISSION FROM GOD & NOTHING CAN STOP WHAT IS COMING."
- Pepe the frog — a cartoon symbol embraced by the alt-right — is standing in the background. The edit was credited to another account on Truth Social.
What they're saying: The White House didn't directly respond when asked about Trump sharing conspiracy theories.
- "President Trump has done more than any other president in modern history to stop antisemitic violence and hold corrupt institutions, like Harvard, accountable for allowing anti-American radicalism to escalate," White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email.
The intrigue: Between those two posts, Trump made and shared (real) political and economic news.
- On Friday, he accused China of breaking the trade truce it reached with the U.S. The stock market immediately dropped on Trump's post.
- On Saturday, before he suggested his political rival had been executed, Trump announced he'd withdrawn Jared Isaacman's NASA nomination.
- He also shared highlights from his remarks at a U.S. Steel facility in Pennsylvania, where he said he'd increase tariffs on steel imports to 50% from 25%.
- Trump also used his Truth Social account to endorse books written by MAGA-aligned playwright David Mamet and Salena Zito, a journalist who detailed the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Yes, but: The things Trump doesn't post are just as striking.
- Trump didn't issue a statement on the Sunday attack near a Boulder, Colorado, rally advocating for the release of Hamas-held hostages in Gaza until Monday afternoon.
- Trump condemned the "horrific" attack that he said "WILL NOT BE TOLERATED" and claimed the suspect in the attack "came in through Biden's ridiculous Open Border Policy."
- The official White House X account on Sunday reposted statements from several other administration officials condemning the attack.
Context: It's not a new phenomenon for Trump to platform unproven conspiracies and misinformation on social media or in the White House.
- Per the Washington Post's count, the president made 30,573 untruthful statements during his first term, many of which he shared to Twitter.
- He's repeatedly said the 2020 election was stolen and has elevated racist "birther" conspiracies against his opponents.
- On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump and Vice President Vance repeated a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets.
- And in a shocking Oval Office encounter last month with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump pointed to misleading images when doubling down on the "white genocide" conspiracy theory.
The bottom line: With no fact-checks or consequences for falsehoods, Trump can be, as he's shared multiple posts saying, "right about everything."
Go deeper: Trump cites mainstream outlets, despite fights
Editor's note: This story has been updated with Trump's statement on the Boulder, Colo., attack.
