Fox News says ‘verified’ account on Trump’s Truth Social is fake news
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On Tuesday afternoon, an Axios reporter tweeted about Fox News’ verified account on Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social media platform. Shares in the disastrous tech endeavor spiked, and then that Axios reporter deleted the tweet. According to Axios, this is because it turns out, the account—which was promoted by parody cow account litigator Devin Nunes himself, is fake news. No, not “fake news” in the way Fox News isn’t really news; fake news as in Fox News says they have no account on Truth Social.
To quote a Fox News spokesperson speaking to Axios: “We are not on Truth Social.”
Devin Nunes, the CEO of Truth Social, reportedly tweeted out a screenshot of the account on the platform and lied, saying, “Great to have RSS feed for @FoxNews now LIVE here on TRUTH!” Nunes has not been available to comment on this news. I guess being the CEO of a social media company that just launched must mean hiding from news and social media outlets?
This is just the latest stumble by the Trump media platform. The platform launched with major delays back in February, and the revelation that the application’s design might very well face a copyright infringement lawsuit. This was followed by the predictable, but still bad, news that for all Trump and other “freedom” warriors’ griping about “censorship,” the Truth Social app was fine with banning and censoring all kinds of folks.
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This led to late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel saying, “Truth Social has been such a disappointment so far, Trump may have to rename it to ‘Don Jr.’” As funny as that joke is, the sentiment was echoed by reports that Donald Trump himself was heard barking, “What the fuck is going on?” into a phone when discussing his social media platform.
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Most recently, Josh Adams and Billy Boozer—the company’s chiefs of technology and product development—had resigned from Truth Social over the past couple of weeks. Adams and Boozer were considered technology architects for the Truth Social platform and their departures are yet another sign that the rats are fleeing the flaming garbage barge that is Truth Social.
According to Mashable’s Matt Binder, Truth Social seems to be in the bot-like practice of setting up big-company accounts, setting that company’s RSS feed to post, and making it look as if those companies have official accounts with the service. It’s a classic bit of propaganda with plausible deniability—if you don’t put a “verified” check on it, and add a small label that denotes this is a “bot” account. If one has the wherewithal to follow through on that small “bot” label, the app will explain that the account is not sanctioned or run by the company (i.e. NFL) represented in the account. However, the Fox News kerfuffle includes Truth Social’s CEO, Devin Nunes, promoting the new account as an officially sanctioned one.
The clearly right-wing media play by Trump and Nunes and whoever is pumping and dumping money behind the scenes has not gained the traction they hoped. Prominent right-wing and ultra-right-wing media personalities like Glenn Beck, Steve Bannon, and Tucker Carlson are still nowhere to be found on the platform.
But the good news for pump and dumpers, the “special acquisition company”—that is, the shell money behind Truth social—Digital World Acquisition saw its publicly traded share price rise with Nunes’ fake news.