The president’s team said they thought it would be ‘funny’ to join his rival’s social media platform.
President Joe Biden’s campaign team launched a new account Monday on the last platform anyone would have expected them to use—former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social.
“Well. Let’s see how this goes,” the Biden-Harris HQ account wrote in its first post. “Converts welcome!”
The stream of posts that followed included clips of other GOP presidential hopefuls criticizing President Trump—the clear front-runner for the party’s nomination—and a post asserting his “long record of lying to auto workers.”
In a post to the Biden campaign’s X account, the president’s team said they joined Truth Social “mostly because we thought it would be very funny.”
We just joined Truth Social, mostly because we thought it would be very funny.
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) October 16, 2023
Follow us there for truths and retruths or whatever they call them: https://t.co/tKNFKcOsUE pic.twitter.com/Jofjex8kp9
Campaign officials elaborated on the move in an interview with Fox News prior to the launch, saying they had hopes of “meeting voters where they are.”
“Republicans can’t even agree on a Speaker of the House, so clearly, not every Republican thinks the same,” they told the outlet, adding that they intended to combat “mis- and disinformation” on Truth Social.
“There’s very little ‘truth’ happening on Truth Social, but at least now it’ll be a little fun,” a senior campaign aide said.
The launch has definitely met one of the Biden campaign’s goals; now supporters of the two campaigns are exchanging views.
Within three hours of its first “truth,” the account had amassed just over 4,500 followers, and nearly all of its posts had been “ratioed”—meaning they received more replies than likes or reposts.
The replies were about as complimentary as one might expect on a platform dominated by President Trump’s supporters.
Presidential Race
The 45th president launched Truth Social in February 2022, just over a year after his expulsion from Twitter (now X) following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
Although his X account was restored by the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, last November, President Trump has only posted there once in the months since.
“Election Interference. Never Surrender!” he wrote on Aug. 24 following his arrest in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with his protest of the 2020 election results. The message also included his mug shot, which he has since used to raise funds toward his election campaign.
