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France 24
2 days ago
- Politics
- France 24
How Trump turned his Truth Social app into a megaphone
To mark his first six months back in power, Trump unloaded around 40 posts Sunday on the app he owns and can use unfettered by moderators, censors or fact-checkers. The deluge was characteristic of the way he has transformed Truth Social, despite being a minnow in the social media world, into the White House's primary means of communication. AFP analyzed over 2,800 Truth Social posts by @realDonaldTrump from his inauguration on January 20, 2025 up to July 20 to get a better idea of how the Republican communicates. Sidelining the White House press office, the president speaks straight to his hardcore base, posting an average of 16 messages a day, many in all-caps rants peppered with exclamation marks and the odd expletive. Although Truth Social is tiny compared to X, Trump can post to 10.5 million followers knowing that he is being followed by the media and political establishment, with much of what he says quickly being reposted to rival platforms. Trump repays the favor, helping to create a right-wing media ecosystem that invariably circles back to him. Since January 20, he has shared Fox News articles 101 times, and the New York Post and Breitbart News 51 times each. "The minute he puts something on Truth Social, others pick it up and echo it," said Darren Linvill, a social media and disinformation specialist at Clemson University in South Carolina. Alternative to Twitter In his first term, Trump relied in a similar way on what was then known as Twitter -- renamed X on being purchased by Elon Musk. But after Trump's attempt to overthrow his loss in the 2020 election, he was banned by Twitter and Facebook and briefly persona non grata in Washington. Although once more present on the bigger alternatives, Trump continues to prefer Truth Social. The posts vary wildly in content, all part of Trump's brand of mixing politics with entertainment. And the style deliberately mimics Trump's verbal ticks -- the bombast, salesmanship and exaggeration. "Vladimir, STOP," he posted on April 24, after Russia launched an especially heavy bombing of Kyiv. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not stop, but Trump's two-word plea earned heavy media coverage. Half of his posts used at least one exclamation point and 155 were written in all-caps. One post on March 23, promoting his cryptocurrency $Trump, read: "I LOVE $TRUMP -- SO COOL!!! The Greatest of them all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Controlling the narrative Trump's posts are a way for him to keep the public on its toes and to change the narrative by giving journalists a new "rabbit hole" to follow when needed, said presidential historian Alvin Felzenberg. The leader of the world's biggest economy knows investors are paying equally close attention. As markets plunged following Trump's tariffs announcements, he used Truth Social on March 10 to pump out articles predicting optimistic economic outcomes. On April 9, just as stock prices were tanking, he posted: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" And hours later, he announced a 90-day suspension of additional tariffs against dozens of countries, triggering the best day for the S&P 500 index since the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. The timing led to accusations from Democrats of an insider trader scheme. "Truth Social doesn't quite have the firepower that I think Twitter had..., but it's still impactful enough that it can at times move the market," says Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management.
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
News Analysis: Trump's ‘force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
WASHINGTON — When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things,' his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,' he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed. The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration. For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow. 'I believe he wants peace,' Trump said of Putin in February. 'I trust him on this subject.' But to Trump's surprise, Putin wasn't satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media ('Vladimir, STOP!'). Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: 'Nobody's playing me.' But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along,' he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything.' The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago. Despite his mercurial style, Trump's approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said. 'There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,' Schake said. 'Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.' Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: 'He favors autocrats over democrats.' Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted. The problem, Schake said, is that those principles 'impede Trump's ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn't seem to realize it. 'The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,' she said. 'Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.' Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump's frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs. 'Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,' he said. 'Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. ... I don't think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.' Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don't agree. 'It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test.
Politico
4 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
‘It's like a game of Whac-A-Mole': How Trump's ICE raids knocked Los Angeles to its knees
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, contested reports that most people detained did not have a criminal record. She said the government's operations have arrested 'drug traffickers, MS-13 gang members, convicted rapists, convicted murderers — people you would not want to be your neighbors. And yet, Karen Bass, instead of thanking law enforcement, continues to demonize them and attack them.' The fear permeating Latino life has added resonance for Bass; her late ex-husband was Mexican American and many family members, including her late daughter, her step-children and grandchildren, have Latino heritage. 'So yes, it impacts me personally, because I know that all Latinos are suspect now, anybody that looks Latino,' Bass said, pointing to border czar Tom Homan's comments that 'physical appearance' was sufficient for federal authorities to detain someone. He later said appearance could not be the sole reason for suspicion. But the federal judge who blocked the roving immigration raids in Los Angeles said officials were relying on improper factors, such as race, occupation and speaking with an accent, during their operations. McLaughlin said it was a 'convenient and disgusting smear to say that law enforcement targets based on skin color. It is about it is about legal status, that everything and criminality. That's what we're focused on.' Beyond the family bonds, Bass said, leaning into immigrant rights is 'fundamentally who I am' — a culmination of years of community activism, of anti-apartheid advocacy, of collaborations between Black and Latino communities in the 1980s and 1990s. 'It's not because it's politically in. It's not because of some calculation of what happened in the first part of the year,' she said. 'This is an issue that has been fundamental to me for my entire adult life.' Loathe as Bass is to make comparisons to her handling of the fires, the contrast is notable, even to her closest allies. The mayor was hamstrung from the start of the blazes, when she was out of the country, and she failed to regain control of the narrative upon her return. This time, Bass has ramped up her media presence; during her brief stop at El Chapulín, she squeezed in two Zoom interviews with Spanish-language media, and she has been a regular staple on national cable. 'She is really trying to paint a different picture of what is going on here — not letting Breitbart and Fox tell the story,' said Courtni Pugh, a senior adviser for Bass' political operation. 'We really tried very hard to put a human face on the toll.' Onlookers watch as federal agents with US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) ride on an armored vehicle driving slowly down Wilshire Boulevard near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, California, on July 7, 2025. | Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images When militarized federal agents, including officials on horseback, descended onto MacArthur Park in the heart of downtown in an intimidating though largely theatrical display, Bass rerouted from a ceremony marking the six-month anniversary of the fires to the scene, demanding to speak to whoever was in charge.
Axios
5 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Scoop: Mega-MAGA candidate pushes to deport "every single illegal immigrant"
Kentucky Senate candidate Nate Morris is rolling out a new ad that ups the ante on mass deportations right as a fresh debate over amnesty roils MAGAworld. Why it matters: Morris is casting himself as the most pro-Trump candidate in the GOP primary against Reps. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — both of whom have ties to retiring former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And he's leaning into one of MAGA's most foundational issues to do it. "I'm sick of watching the elites give handouts to illegals while working-class families struggle. I'll lead the fight against amnesty by stopping all immigration until we deport every single illegal immigrant in America," Morris says in the ad. "I'm a Trump guy, not a McConnell boy," Morris concludes in a barb at Barr and Cameron. Between the lines: The ad, launching Friday as part of a seven-figure buy that's running statewide on broadcast and streaming platforms, hits on a GOP third rail right as Republicans convulse over how to tackle the millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. MAGA raged against suggestions from Trump that undocumented immigrants in the agriculture and hospitality industries could receive deportation protections. Critics called those proposals tantamount to "amnesty," which Trump denied, instead labeling the prospect a "work program." A new bipartisan House bill that would offer legal status to undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States since before 2021 is being met with the same hostile reaction by MAGA. Morris himself has taken a hardline immigration stance, having advocated for a moratorium on all immigration to the U.S. until every undocumented immigrant is deported. Zoom out: Morris is centering much of his campaign on his MAGA bona fides. The businessman has touted his outsider status, declared he stands with Trump "100%" and hammered McConnell, a Trump foe and establishment stalwart. Morris has also blitzed MAGA media to increase his name recognition with movement loyalists, appearing on "War Room," "The Charlie Kirk Show," Benny Johnson's podcast, Vince Coglianese's show in Dan Bongino's old time slot, Breitbart radio and more. "We don't care about traditional D.C. media because those aren't where our voters are," one strategist close to Morris said. "Kentucky GOP Primary voters are watching War Room, listening to Charlie Kirk and reading Breitbart. We also have a candidate whose aggressive style and unapologetically America first message is a perfect fit for MAGA media," the strategist added. What they're saying: Barr's campaign said the congressman "has never supported amnesty and never will" and bashed Morris' "new attempt to play MAGA on TV" as "lame."
CBS News
10-07-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Treasury official Julia Hahn leaves as tariff and trade negotiations intensify
A senior official in the Treasury Department has told colleagues she is leaving the Trump administration, in the midst of intensifying trade negotiations, to seek a role in the private sector, according to sources familiar with her plans. Julia Hahn, assistant secretary for public affairs, has said she is leaving soon, likely to start her own public affairs firm, two of the sources said. Hahn was 25 when she started working at the White House during President Trump's first term, under then-chief strategist Stephen Bannon. She defended Mr. Trump as deputy White House communications director during his first impeachment trial. In his second term, Hahn, now 34, has worked on trade matters, sanctions and tax cuts. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CBS News, "As she embarks on her next chapter, we wish her continued success and know she will carry forward the same passion and excellence that defined her time here." White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called Hahn an "invaluable asset" to the Treasury Department. "While her departure is a major loss to the administration, we know that she will continue to be an extraordinary ally on the outside," Miller told CBS News. Previously Hahn also worked for GOP Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, as a producer at Laura Ingraham's radio show, and as a reporter for Breitbart during Bannon's time as an executive at the conservative website.
