Truth Social, Donald Trump, and the Climate Crisis

Browsing Trump’s social media network teaches a lot about what a second Trump administration would mean for climate action

For generations, Londoners seeking inexpensive amusement would head to Royal Bethlem Hospital— aka “Bedlam” — to take twisted pleasure in the antics of the unfortunate “lunatics” housed within.

Their experience must have been similar to that of modern virtual tourists visiting Donald Trump’s pet social network, Truth Social. The principal difference is that the residents of Bedlam weren’t one election cycle away from running the country.

Truth Social is the home of the hardcore American right; X-Twitter for the MAGA-est of the MAGA. I signed up to learn what Team Trump sees as the critical issues of the day.

I expected to see numerous “Truths” — the mind-bendingly inaccurate term for posts — about regulating drag shows, stripping libraries of any books which might have shocked a Victorian vicar, and making it easier for untrained civilians to kill each other with concealed firearms.

Those topics are there, although secondary to disproven lies about election fraud, and an unhealthy fixation on Hunter Biden. And more critically, anti-science memes, specifically rejecting or mispresenting the science around the climate crisis.

And so to my point.

Truth Social isn’t successful by any metric. It’s estimated to have about 2 million active users vs. 450 million for X-Twitter, which has itself taken a hit since Elon Musk took over and rebranded himself as the troll prince of social media. And at a glance, most Truth Social posters get about as much human engagement as your average sewer clown.

The exception is Donald Trump, who “truths” numerous times each day, almost exclusively about himself — who’s wronged him, who’s praised him, the latest perfidy of his many foes. His 5.8 million followers read and “reTruth” every word with alarming zeal.

So while Truth Social may not represent the full spectrum of the American right, it likely represents that portion who, given a simultaneous second coming of Trump and of Jesus, would put the Nazarene on the pullout couch.

This is no small matter, since Trump is currently a shoo-in to be the GOP candidate for President in 2024, with a solid shot at dragging his personal brand of Big Mac-fueled madness back to the White House in 2024.

And what Truth Social believes is what Trump will do.

Meanwhile, the climate crisis caused by greenhouse gases and amplified by El Nino, is breaking records like Usain Bolt at a middle school track meet.

This summer, much of the United States has been suffering through unprecedented heat, and this month’s wildfires on Maui promise to be the deadliest in the US in at least a century.

Globally, July was the hottest month ever recorded by a wide margin.

The climate change catastrophes predicted by science have arrived.

Truth Social does have hundreds of posts — I cannot in good conscience keep typing “Truths” — about the Maui fires, but they’re all concerned with an imaginary Democratic/globalist conspiracy which either caused the fires or failed to respond adequately to them.

More broadly, a search for the word “climate” on Truth Social unearths a posse of virulent deniers pitching long-debunked talking points.

Amid the rising chaos, Donald Trump responds by posting items like the one below. If you saw someone on the street holding a sign with this written on it, you’d drop a couple of bucks in his cup and hope he’s able to get some help.

This would be more amusing than concerning if the lunatics didn’t have a fifty-fifty chance of taking over the asylum next year.

The previous Trump administration pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, and the man himself has for years dishonestly dismissed the existence and diminished the impact of climate change. In a speech at a conservative conference in 2022, he joked that “the oceans may rise, over the next 300 years, 1/100th of an inch…giving you slightly more seafront property.”

The US remains the world’s largest economy, and second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (after China). Emissions have been dropping since around 2008 for a variety of reasons, not all policy-driven, but must get much lower. Under a Trump administration, there’d be little incentive to address a problem that Trump’s most avid, rabid, supporters think is overstated at best, a hoax at worst.

Moreover, Trump's Truth Social posts, his speeches, and his previous record as POTUS all signal what his agenda as President would be — expanding his executive powers, harassing his enemies, and enriching his family and friends.

Fighting the climate crisis wouldn’t even make the list.

The growing list of fires, floods, heatwaves, and storms demonstrates that now is the time for a global “all hands on deck” approach to making dramatic greenhouse gas cuts, and mitigating the climate pain that’s already locked in. This strategy will be effectively impossible without the economic and moral clout of the United States.

Bedlam indeed.

With the fate of civilization potentially hanging in the balance, we should all hope that Americans vote carefully in 2024.

Conservative social media: Parler as an instructive example

Thinly populated as it is, Truth Social is still faring better than Parler, the one-time great hope of MAGA-media. Launched in August 2018, Parler peaked at around 20 million registered users (40,000 actives) who presumably found value in its unique melange of hatebots, misinformation and porn.

In April of 2023 the service was purchased by conservative digital media company Starboard and immediately shuttered, the site home page replaced by the candid observation, “No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more”.