What the Truth Social Flop Says About Trump

 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/10/truth-social-flop-says-about-trump-00055977

Nothing about Truth Social’s disastrous beginnings should surprise us. Donald Trump has proved himself again and again to be a wreck of an entrepreneur. Steaks, his university, water, an airline, casinos, the USFL, a mortgage company, vodka — the list reads like a guide on how not to succeed in business. Associating Trump with a new venture has become a business death wish.

Trump is still the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and could well wind up in the White House (assuming he’s not behind bars). But there’s also evidence that Trump has simply exhausted the Trump meme he invented. Trump’s deranged outrage style once contained real entertainment value — which explains why moderates and liberals followed him on Twitter even if they wouldn’t vote for him. But in his post-presidency and especially in the weeks following the Mar-a-Lago search and investigation, the show has gone stale. Vainly, he has sought to top himself by sharing QAnon-related material on Truth Social, denouncing the FBI like a madman trapped in a bunker, and calling for his reinstatement as the “rightful winner“ of the 2020 election. He’s become a carnival geek biting the heads off of snakes, which can be a fabulous show the first couple of times you see it, but after that, meh. Could today’s Trump devise enough fresh outrage to produce even a brief TikTok?