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Former President Donald Trump on Saturday congratulated Joe Biden for joining his Truth Social platform, while also adding a jab against the president's leadership prowess.
The 2024 presidential election is widely expected to feature a rematch between Biden and Trump, with the latter consistently outpacing all other Republican candidates in polls by considerable margins. As part of his reelection effort, the Biden campaign has made notable moves into typically conservative media spaces, including the purchase of ads on Fox News' website and during certain broadcasts on the network.
Another move in this vein saw the Biden 2024 campaign make the unexpected move on Monday of setting up an account on Truth Social, the social media platform that Trump funded the creation of after he was initially banned from Twitter in the wake of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Since its launch, the site's user base has skewed heavily conservative and pro-Trump, with the former president using the platform to make frequent public comments, as he was known for doing on Twitter.
In a post from Saturday morning, Trump hailed the Biden team's decision to join Truth Social, suggesting that it was one of the only things they have done right.
"We are heading to World War III because of grossly incompetent leadership, headed by a President that doesn't have a clue, although he did have the sense to just join TRUTH, the real VOICE OF AMERICA," the former president wrote. "Congratulations Joe, at least, on that!"
Newsweek reached out to representatives for Biden for comment via email.
Notably, as of a few days after the account's creation, the Biden campaign account, dubbed "Biden-Harris HQ," had garnered more followers on Truth Social than Trump's 2024 campaign account, dubbed "Team Trump." As of Saturday morning, Biden-Harris HQ boasted 34,800 followers, while Team Trump boasted only 28,900.
"After just two days, the Biden campaign already has more followers than the Trump campaign on Truth Social," Parker Butler, director of digital rapid response for Biden-Harris HQ, wrote in a post on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, on Wednesday.
Explaining the campaign's decision to join the notably anti-Biden social network, Butler gave a simple reason: "We just joined Truth Social, mostly because we thought it would be very funny."
Similar intention has been ascribed to the Biden campaign's overall move into conservative media spaces. A headline from The Daily Beast in September described the campaign's purchase of ads on Fox News channels as an effort to troll Trump and the Republican Party.
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About the writer
Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more