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WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump’s media group is aiming to launch its long-promised social network in February, according to a listing at Apple’s App Store.
A ‘Truth Social’ app is expected to be available on February 21, the listing showed, before going live on the US Presidents’ Day holiday and will have features similar to online connection tools found at Facebook.
Similar to Twitter, the app offers features to follow other people and trending topics, according to demo photos. Its message equivalent of a tweet will be dubbed “truth”.
The 75-year-old was thrown off Twitter — his preferred communication conduit while president — as well as Facebook and YouTube after last year’s January 6 insurrection, in which a mob of Trump supporters, riled up by his repeated false claims that the November 2020 election was stolen from him, assaulted the US Capitol.
Trump says the new platform will be an alternative to Silicon Valley internet companies that he says are biased against him and other conservative voices. The social network is currently being used by invited guests as it readies for public launch, according to Trump Media and Technology Group.
Marking the one-year anniversary of the attack, US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that his predecessor’s false claims could unravel the rule of law and subvert future elections. read more
After largely ignoring Trump for a year, Biden took off the gloves, describing the Republican as a cheat whose ego wouldn’t let him accept defeat and whose supporters almost shattered US democracy when they stormed Congress to prevent certification of the election.
Trump, who has spent the last year spreading conspiracy theories about his election loss to millions of followers, quickly fired back with a series of statements doubling down on his lie about the “rigged” election and dismissing Biden’s speech as “political theater.”
Truth Social will join an already crowded market of social networks popular among conservatives and members of the far-right. Gettr was launched in early July by a former Trump adviser, while Parler and Gab are already favored by the real estate mogul’s supporters.
TMTG is valued at $5.3 billion based on the stock price of Digital World Acquisition Corp. TMTG agreed in October to merge with the blank-check firm at a valuation of $875 million. TMTG last month raised an additional $1 billion from private investors.
Trump canceled a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that had been scheduled for Jan. 6, marking the one-year anniversary of the Capitol attack. He said he will instead deliver remarks at a rally in Arizona on January 15.
