Trump's return to X was good news for the platform—but it seems he's not back for good
X owner Elon Musk interviewed former president Donald Trump in a 2+ hour Spaces audio event last night. While the terrain covered in the mutually-congratulatory conversation was mostly old hat, what was new was that it seemed to have brought Donald Trump back to tweeting on the platform — at least for a day.
After having tweeted just once last year, Trump tweeted 11 times yesterday. Trump had been banned from what used to be Twitter after he incited violence at the Capitol, but Musk reinstated him in 2022, a year he didn’t tweet at all. Yesterday was by far the most Trump, who had once been a prolific tweeter and a huge draw to the site, posted in three years.
In the intervening period, Trump had been posting on his own social media site, Truth Social, where he’s legally obligated to post first.
Trump’s return to X is good news for the site, which has been losing users and advertisers. The Trump conversation had 1.3 million listeners at one point — after a 45 minute technical delay — according to X metrics. However, the return might have been short-lived. After the event, Trump went back to posting exclusively on Truth Social, without so much as a link to X.