They might want to rethink the name.
Devin Nunes went on Fox Business on Thursday to spin the notion that Truth Social — the struggling social media platform launched by former President Donald Trump and headed by Nunes — is giving Twitter a run for its money. The explanation given by the dairy-farmer-turned-congressman-turned-tech-CEO sounded as confused as the social media users wanting to join Truth Social.
Appearing on Fox Business Thursday, Nunes was asked by host Maria Bartiromo how he felt about multibillionaire Elon Musk becoming Twitter’s largest shareholder this week, as Truth Social, which Nunes said would be fully operational by the end of March, continues struggling to register new users.
“It’s clear that Twitter is kind of a ghost town, they desperately need Elon Musk to be there,” he said. “There’s not very much activity over at Twitter right now — especially when you compare it to sites like ours.”
Nunes said he thinks Twitter and Truth Social can flourish together, invoking the analogy of a “rising tide that lifts all boats.”
It’s easy to see why Nunes may have thought Bartiromo, who is at the heart of a pair of multibillion-dollar lawsuits targeting her reporting on unsubstantiated voting machine irregularities, would be an easy sell. But that wasn’t the case Thursday.
“There are a lot of people who can’t even log in to see where they are in the waitlist,” Bartiromo fired back.
The Fox Business reporter — whose on-screen charts indicated Twitter was doing quite well financially — then asked Wall Street investor Lou Basenese to weigh-in on the subject.
“I would love to see the ‘interaction,’ but I have been waiting six weeks, and I’ve only gone down 30,000 people on the waitlist,” that Truth Social wait-lister said.
Nunes repeated his “ghost town claim,” to which Basenese replied “Sir, there’s 217 million users there ... it’s not a ghost town.”
Nunes, offering little information to back his claims, alleged that Twitter’s numbers were inflated by bots and trolls, where that was less of an issue for Truth Social. Reuters reported Monday that Truth Social has just lost two major CEOs, prompting one tech industry insider to say, “All bets are off.”
The Wrap last week reported Truth Social downloads had dropped 93% from the platform’s opening week. According to the Daily Beast, the former president — who has not posted to his own platform since its Presidents Day rollout — has grown frustrated with the struggling upstart.
That report said Truth Social has had roughly 1.2 million downloads in total and that more than 870,000 of those occurred on the platform’s opening week. Trump launched Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol during an event he promoted on social media.
Nunes insisted Truth Social is on course for success and expects that to happen once the platform rises to meet demand.
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