The Observer watches Donald s Truth Social | Observer’s editorial

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In the story of Donald Trump’s life, in his mind an epic legend of unparalleled success, these are the few years. After the U.S. electoral college confirmed his defeat in 2020, an outcome he still contends with, Trump fell into despair. He contributed, he raged, he conspired. However the plot of the coup on 6 January was a serious step very far. He was thrown into the darkness outside.

Trump has lost the White House bully pulpit and the ability of a U.S. president to garner immediate global attention. Personally injured was the ban imposed by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, which allowed him to agree that he posed a threat to democracy. Trump has been cut off from social media and his supporter base. He just calmed down.

What worse fate could there be for a selfish person who seeks constant attention and approval? Exiled to his luxurious Florida estate, the Elba of the Everglades, Trump has struggled since to regain his voice. Last week, he moved on. The result: the so -called Truth Social media app, launching next year.

The newly formed company behind the app, Trump Media and Technology Group, plans to spread what it calls “anti-awake” news, debate and entertainment to Americans deprived of honest, impartial media outlets. . This is the total drivel, of course, coming from the mouth of the most shameless liar in modern US history.

Abusing the truth as only Trump can, Truth Social is more likely to prove both wrong and antisocial. This is his way to recover what he has lost, before the desired return to the presidency in 2024. It is a political propaganda platform intended to magnify and take advantage of the hatred, ignorance and prejudice with which he is fed. Please note MPs: Trump is the ultimate definition of “online harms”.

This personal bid to defeat the “tyranny of big tech” is a commercial shot. The new app looks remarkable on Twitter, which has over 200m users. The previous US attempt to grow the alternative “conservative social space” has failed. Although shares in the new company have initially climbed, its USP is heavily dependent on Trump’s continued appeal.

That appeal seems even more broken. Trump is under fire from Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and other Republicans who fear his obsession with overturning the result in 2020 is diverting attention from Joe Biden’s mistakes before midterm congressional elections next year.

An early trial will come on Nov. 2 when Democrat-leaning Virginia elects a governor. Polls there currently suggest a dead heat. Meanwhile, Trump is also taking legal heat. His family’s business is facing a fraud investigation. He was recently questioned under oath for more than four hours in a civil lawsuit in New York.

Steve Bannon, one of his best-known former aides, was found in contempt in Congress for its refusal to testify at the investigation on Jan. 6 and faces possible criminal prosecution. Because Trump ordered all of his henchmen to behave similarly, the legal bull’s eye pinned to his back was getting further and further away.

Yet for all that, Trump remains the first choice among Republican voters for the party’s presidential nomination. His average “favorable / undesirable” rating is almost identical to Biden’s among voters as a whole. And he showed how dangerous he was when he reached a wide audience, so Truth Social is concerned.

Will Trump rise again from the abyss, like the “shapeless monsters” envisioned by the great 19th-century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev? Life is like a hopeless person sitting in a small boat on a calm, limitless ocean, he wrote. “Then one of the monsters starts coming out of the trash, rising higher and higher, becoming more repellently, vividly bright … Another minute and its impact will topple the boat.”

So far, Trump’s gruesome plot is vague, his voice muted. He was waiting for Turgenev’s “appointed day,” when he intended, once again, to abandon the state ship. Where we say: all hands on deck!

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