"I want everybody to come over to TRUTH — conservatives, liberals, whatever," said Donald Trump. "The response on TRUTH is much better than being on Twitter."
The former U.S. President launched the social media platform in a bid to regain what he had lost, when he was banned from Twitter following the U.S. Capitol riots.
After being banned on other social media networks as well, he went to Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives.
He also had his son asking Elon Musk to create another social media network to "save free speech in America".
But none of that managed to get significant traction.
After billionaire and the world's richest man Elon Musk became the largest single shareholder of Twitter, Musk who is a prominent advocate of free speech, hints a possible return of Trump to the social media network.
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in a tweet.
But no, Donald Trump has said he wouldn’t rejoin Twitter, even if Musk completes his $44 billion takeover of the company and rescinds his ban in the name of free speech.
Trump himself has been telling his advisers that he has no plans to rejoin the social media network that banned him from his megaphone.
According to reports, his plan is to post exclusively to Truth Social and on that platform only.
Trump even said publicly, that Twitter as boring and irrelevant.
But some of Trump’s advisers don’t believe that.
Some of them argue that the former President won't be able to move on from the fact that Twitter fueled his rise to the presidency.
So even though he owns a Twitter clone, Truth Social, that has staked its existence on the exclusive use of Trump’s online brand, Twitter is still a past Trump will never forget.
Trump regularly complains about his lost reach.
After all, his Truth Social followers is only about 1% of his peak Twitter following. Because of that, his comments couldn't get enough traction nor the attention of the press.
"Truth Social is working out its kinks, they are onboarding people … but he loved his Twitter," said one of Trump advisers.
"Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise."
What's more, despite saying that he would only be on Truth Social, Trump only posted once.
This is a huge contrast to when he was back at Twitter.
According to Statista, a German company specializing in market and consumer data, Trump tweeted or retweeted approximately 3,500 times in 2018, 7,700 times in 2019 and on over more than 12,000 times in 2020. He was tagged on Twitter at a rate of 1,000 times a minute in 2019. His most prolific day came on June 05, 2020 when he sent 200 tweets or retweets, breaking a previous record of 142 sent on during his impeachment trial on January 23, 2020.
On average, Trump tweeted 5.7 times per day during his first half year in the White House, and that number had grown to 34.8 times a day on average during the second half of 2020.