Former US president Donald Trump recently launched a new social network app called Truth Social. Photo: AP.
“Follow the Truth.
“Truth Social is America’s ‘Big Tent’ social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology.
“At the moment, Truth Social is available for US users only, but rest assured, we are working hard to make it available in your country. When Truth Social becomes available for you, we’ll make an announcement. Stay tuned!”
Ah yes, follow the truth. Have falser words ever been uttered?
Truth Social is Donald Trump’s new social media app. Remember Trump, the bloke who according to the Washington Post, told more than 30,000 lies or misleading statements in his four years as President?
He was nothing if not industrious: just to break that statistic down: 30,000 lies divided by four years = 7500 a year, divided by 365 days = 20.5 a day.
Given that everyone has to sleep for at least a few hours, and calculating on a bare minimum of four hours’ rest, that equates to one an hour every day of every week, month and year he was in the White House. It’s a wonder he had time to draw breath (other than to lie or mislead).
It’s also calculated he sent 57,000 tweets in that time to his 90 million followers, which at a rough guide from the above means two every waking hour every day of every week, month and year. That’s a lot of covfefe.
And then it, and he, stopped. Trump lost the election and, in the aftermath, he lost access to not only Twitter, but Facebook and YouTube.
Any reasonable, fair-minded person would have said fair cop. I made mistakes and I’ll take the consequences. But not Trump. What did he do? First, he denied he lost, he banged on that it was stolen. By whom? Let’s blame the Venezuelans, for a start and then anyone will do.
Then, he fomented an insurrection on the US Capitol, an incitement of a mob to take down democracy, essentially. Only a dictator would do that. Hitler went to jail for his beer hall putsch in 1923, only to bounce back a decade later to be chancellor on the boot heels of thuggery, threats and violence.
Trump, of course, isn’t Hitler. Except for this. Truth is the enemy, truth is the casualty of their world. Forever. As George Orwell said: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
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In America, there are however, speed humps on his highway to hell. Last week, US District judge Amit Mehta ruled that lawsuits seeking damages over the January 6 events can proceed. While Trump’s lawyers argued he was just doing his job, the judge ruled that his actions were not about “his duties of faithfully executing the laws, conducting foreign affairs, commanding the armed forces, or managing the Executive Branch”.
They “entirely concern[ed] his efforts to remain in office for a second term”.
Only this week the world was reminded of what it had been missing out on.
Trump described Putin as a genius. He had been watching Putin’s moves towards Ukraine on TV, and thought to himself, “This is genius. Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful”.
But then again, just to turn everything into being about himself, he said, “This never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened”.
But Trump needs more than the occasional rally or spot on TV. He needs the big megaphone that is social media. There are 4.5 billion people in the world using it. More than 80 per cent of the American population use it. Trump needs to stay plugged in to that network.
Of course, it’s impossible to know if he is being ironic calling the new app Truth Social, or if he believes it deeply to be so. The power of the ideologue is to declare that what they are saying is the truth no one else dares to say. An alternate world is built and promoted.
At present, Truth Social is on the Apple Store. It has had some teething problems and due to the impertinence of some, it has been subject to hack attacks. Observers say it looks similar to Twitter with the exception of using red ticks, not blue ticks. During a test run, Trump’s son Donald jnr posted a screenshot of Trump’s first post: “Get ready! Your favorite President will see you soon!”
Orwell also said that political language was “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. Which sounds a lot like ‘Trumpspeak’.
Orwell would have been proud to have created the phrase Truth Social.
