The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump used Truth Social to fight back while the House Jan. 6 committee opened its first prime-time hearing on June 9, 2022. The panel’s opening session laid out video and testimony aimed at showing how Trump and allies responded before and during the attack on the Capitol. Trump answered on his own platform with repeated posts attacking the committee, dismissing the hearing, and reviving claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

That mattered because Truth Social was built as Trump’s direct channel after he was pushed off major social platforms following the Capitol attack. Instead of letting him sidestep the hearing, the app became part of the hearing’s coverage. Contemporaneous reporting said Trump posted multiple times during the hearing and into June 10 as he tried to steer supporters away from the committee’s account of events.

The platform also faced its own scrutiny. At the time, some users said their posts about the hearing were limited or that their accounts had been suspended. Those reports were not the same thing as a public, hearing-specific policy announcement from Truth Social, but they did fuel criticism of the site’s moderation practices. Truth Social’s help pages say the service has community guidelines and moderation rules.

The result was less a clean break from the post-Jan. 6 internet than another round of it. Trump used Truth Social to press the same arguments he has made since the attack, while the hearing showed that his new platform still had rules, still had limits, and still put him back in the middle of the story.