California Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking his message to the people who might be the least interested—the users of former President Trump's Truth Social network. In a tweet Thursday, the Democratic governor said he had joined Truth Social to call out "Republican lies," Deadline reports. "This could get…interesting," Newsom wrote. In his first post under the handle "realgavinnewsom40," he shared a video discussing America's "red state murder problem." "Eight of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates happen to be red states," Newsom said in the video, which he also shared in his tweet.
The social network has been struggling—no Android version is available and the web version isn't currently accepting registrations—but Newsom signing up could be a boost, "given that it could prompt other high-profile Democrats to join," according to the Hill. Trump, who didn't post on Truth Social in its early weeks, has stepped up his activity recently and has been using the platform to attack the Jan. 6 hearings. (In a Thursday post, he demanded "equal time" to respond to the hearing, notes Insider.)
Truth Social downloads surged after Trump started posting about the hearings, though total user numbers remain a small fraction of the equivalent at Twitter, which banned Trump after the Capitol riot. Some Truth Social users say they were banned from the "free speech" platform after commenting on the hearings. Jonathan Nagler at NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics says the platform bans "false" comments, and the people running it "seem to believe that anyone who says there was no election fraud is making a false comment." (More Gavin Newsom stories.)
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