Donald Trump’s penchant for paranoid conspiracies isn’t exactly a deep-state secret. But between March and September of this year, the former president shared such theories to his anything-goes social network, Truth Social, at a rate of almost two posts a day.
That statistic is one of several brow-raising takeaways in a new New York Times review of Trump’s Truth Social account, which collected and analyzed 5,641 of Trump’s posts over six months. Of those posts, at least 330 described “a false, secretive plot against Mr. Trump or the American people” and blamed a specific person or organization, the Times found. An additional 388 posts included conspiratorial slogans or imagery, such as acronyms tied to QAnon.
Some of Trump’s favored conspiracies are not particularly imaginative, as far as these things go: He’s posted 43 times about George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and long-time punching bag of right-wing conspiracists the world over.
But the former president has also amplified false narratives and far-right fantasies that serve to directly undermine voter confidence in the federal government and, importantly, in the electoral process. Republicans have already laid the groundwork to challenge next week’s election results in several swing states, and a new CNN poll found that most voters believe Trump will not concede if he loses to Vice President Kamala Harris.
His recent Truth Social activity includes 25 unfounded posts about the “rigging” of the 2020 election and 22 baseless posts about a shadowy “deep state” in the federal government that Trump promises to bust. Since March, he has made or shared at least 268 posts that groundlessly allege his opponents are manipulating the 2024 election, including by importing undocumented immigrants or fabricating court cases against him.
“I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely,” Trump posted on October 25, “because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
The Times analysis also found that Trump regularly reshares content from anonymous accounts that typically trade in offensive and misleading posts, including sexual comments about Harris and manipulated photos and videos. In August, Trump reposted a meme of himself—“Trump is 100% innocent,” it read—from an account that typically aggregates false election conspiracies, including claims that police have arrested Republican voters or shut down early voting locations in Republican areas.
Trump has almost eight million followers on Truth Social, where he posts dozens of times daily. On Tuesday, the former president used the site to rally Pennsylvania voters … and to cheer on the law enforcement officers that, he claimed, were out patrolling the state for “VOTER FRAUD!”
