As Donald Trump and his reelection campaign fall in the polls, the former president is making at least one big move he hopes will change trajectory.
Trump returned to Elon Musk’s Twitter account, “X,” on Monday with a slew of posts promoting his presidential campaign and attacking Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. Trump also promoted an interview with Musk scheduled for Monday night on X’s Space platform.
The first official post on the @realDonaldTrump account was a campaign video upload that went live just after 11 a.m. ET, but the account also posted a paid advertisement just before 3 a.m. ET.
Some X users attention Trump’s sudden return to X is a disappointment Attempt To reverse his falling approval rating.
The tweet may have been deleted
The tweet may have been deleted
others attention How excited they were to see Trump return to X.
The tweet may have been deleted
Trump’s Return to X
Trump’s account has previouslyForever“In January 2021, the account was suspended by the company then known as Twitter following the storming of the Capitol by his supporters,” Musk said. Returned Trump’s account in November 2022, shortly after he acquired the company. Trump’s account on August 24, 2023 First Post Since his suspension, he has continued to post these messages, including a photo of the then-current indictment, which he has used in his campaign materials.
However, since that one post in August of last year, Trump has not posted on X for nearly a year. As of the publication of this article, Trump’s account has posted or reposted eight times.
Mashable Lightspeed
It is unclear whether Trump himself is still posting as he did before the account was suspended, or whether his campaign is using the account.
Trump’s (sometimes) unlabeled paid ads
Paid X ads began running on Trump’s account in the early hours of August 12, before his account began posting again on Monday.
“Are you happier now than when I was President?” he asked, along with a campaign video and the hashtag #TrumpOnX.
The ad post did not appear on Trump’s account, which is not unusual — X allows users to promote posts that are entirely ads that do not appear in their profile feeds — but the post appeared in Trump’s feed before his account resumed posting, causing confusion among X users who are unfamiliar with the company’s advertising platform.
But a big problem with Trump X ads is that they don’t necessarily appear as ads. When a Trump X ad appears in a user’s feed, it has an “ad” label in the top right corner. But when you open a Trump X ad on the post display page, the ad label disappears. For example, if a user is sent a direct link to a Trump X ad, the ad label won’t appear.
In the ad-labeled posts feed, Trump’s X ad looks like this:
This is what a labeled Trump ad looks like in X users’ feeds.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot
Here’s what it looks like on the post display page and embed without the ad label:
The tweet may have been deleted
As mentioned above, X owner Elon Musk is scheduled to interview Trump on Spaces tonight.