If you’re going to invest your hard-earned money betting on Donald Trump, you’d be better off starting a pool where you try to predict when the Hot Pocket lodged in his left ventricle finally explodes his heart like a beached Oregon whale. Investing in one of his businesses? You might as well flush your money down the toilet 10 or 15 times.
As pretty much anyone with any tech background or common sense predicted, Trump’s Orwellian-from-the-outset Truth Social—the MAGA answer to Twitter that no one asked for—is off to a rough start. Maybe because it’s being run by a thin-skinned dairy farmer and a dude who’s best known for fucking up multiple casinos and one centuries-old liberal democracy.
Even for a soft launch, Truth Social’s launch has been particularly soft. And after a botched rollout where most prospective users were simply added to a wait list, Trump has been grumbling about the app behind the scenes, according to two sources familiar with the matter, even as he’s tried to put on a brave face publicly.
In recent weeks, sources have heard the former president on the phone swearing gratuitously and asking things like, “What the fuck is going on” with Truth Social.
Whaaaaaaaa? A Trump business sputtering right out of the gate? Inconceivable! If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Trump doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.
The Daily Beast reviewed analyses of visits to Truth Social performed by SimilarWeb, which tracks website traffic from public and private sources. The company’s figures for the MAGA social network—while only an estimate based on incomplete data—are nonetheless anemic. Trump’s own social media platform is doing either worse or the same as other MAGA social sites like Gab—another pro-Trump competitor website that’s especially beloved by, well, Nazis—and Gettr, a platform fronted by one of Trump’s former top political aides, Jason Miller.
I’m no business maven, but I do know that when you write up a business plan for a new venture, you need to account for industry competitors. Doesn’t look like Trump did his due diligence here. That said, getting beat by Jason Miller in anything besides a douchey goatee contest is a particularly bad look.
According to The Daily Beast, Trump has “repeatedly groused” about bad press and the glaring bumblefuckery of the launch, and he’s demanding to know why the Truth Social app isn’t “swiftly dominating the competition.”
Yeah, that is weird, huh? Did his buddy Vlad plan the app launch, too?
One possible reason for the anemic early numbers is the waitlist that many MAGAs were put on when they tried to sign up. (Will they continually be told their accounts are two weeks away from being completed?) But people also don’t appear to be queuing up for the app the way Trump might have hoped. As of Friday, it was the 72nd most popular free app on Apple’s AppStore.
Naturally, Trump is now telling lies about Truth Social, claiming it’s the biggest thing since Trump Steaks. (Wait, they share the same initials! Is he trying to resurrect some Trump Steaks swag he already had printed up?)
At the recent CPAC event in Orlando, Trump told a reporter, “It’s slowly been opened, people are getting on and they’re loving the product and we’re getting a voice.” He also noted, “It’s been an incredible success. We have hundreds of thousands of people trying to get on and we’re doing it very slowly.”
An incredible, absolutely gangbusters, grindingly slow success! Oh, yes. Tell me more, Captain Vaporware!
Of course, part of the problem is that Trump—who’s not exactly a tech whiz—isn’t even bothering to hold up his end. Trump is basically just a hype machine that runs on french fry grease and lies, and yet he’s not even applying his well-honed horse-shit skills:
Trump's role: The former president is Truth Social's founder and chairman, so he obviously bears some responsibility for putting together the team that's so far fallen on its face. But, most importantly, he's not using the app.
- Trump hasn't posted a single time since the launch, despite an international crisis that has captivated the country. Instead, he's given his comments to radio and TV hosts — including one this morning with Dominion conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo — plus via his CPAC speech.
Please, someone teach me how to short stocks. If I could become a millionaire off Donald Trump’s clammy incompetence, I’d have scintillating cocktail party conversation for the rest of my life.
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And now for something completely different … an exploding Oregon whale! You’re welcome.
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