As Donald Trump and his reelection campaign drops in the polls, the former president is making at least one big move in hopes of altering the trajectory.
On Monday, Trump returned to Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, with a slew of posts promoting his presidential campaign and attacking the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Trump also promoted an upcoming interview with Musk over X’s Spaces platform, which will take place on Monday night.
The first official post back on the @realDonaldTrump account was a campaign video upload published just after 11am ET. However, the account also posted a paid advertisement right before 3am ET.
Some X users noted how they see Trump’s sudden return to X as a desperate attempt to reverse his falling poll numbers.
Others noted how they were excited to see Trump back on X.
Trump’s return to X
Trump’s account previously posted just once before since being “permanently” suspended by the company then-known as Twitter in January 2021 following his supporters’ Capitol building attack. Musk reinstated Trump’s account in November 2022, shortly after he acquired the company. On August 24, 2023, Trump’s account posted for the first time since his suspension. The post included a photo of his then-brand new indictment mugshot, which he has used for his campaign merchandise.
However, after that one August post last year, Trump has gone without posting on X again for nearly a year. As of the publishing time of this piece, Trump’s account now has posted or reposted eight times.
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It’s unclear if Trump himself is posting as he did prior to being suspended — or if his campaign is using the account.
Trump’s (sometimes) unlabeled paid ad
Before Trump’s account started posting again on Monday, a paid X ad started running on his account in the early morning hours of August 12.
“Are you better off now than you were when I was president?,” the post asked, alongside a campaign video and the hashtag #TrumpOnX.
The ad post does not appear on Trump’s account, which isn’t out of the ordinary. X allows users to promote posts that are strictly ads and don’t appear on their profile feed. However, this caused confusion amongst X users who were unfamiliar with X’s advertising platform as the post appeared in feeds before Trump’s account started publishing posts again.
One big issue with Trump’s X ad, however, is that it doesn’t always appear labeled as an ad. Trump’s X ad has an “ad” label in the upper right hand corner when it appears in a user’s feed. However, when opening Trump’s X ad in the post view page, the ad label disappears. If a user was sent a direct link to the Trump ad on X, for example, they would not see the ad label.
Here’s how Trump’s X ad looks in the post feed with the ad label:
This is how the labeled Trump ad that appears in X users’ feeds looks.
Credit: Mashable screenshot
And here’s how it looks on the post view page and via an embed without the ad label:
As previously mentioned, X owner Elon Musk will interview Trump on Spaces tonight.
