I recently was curious to see just who is and is not on Truth Social, the Trump-founded platform where the only complaints by users center around far-right candidates not being conservative enough.
Arizona’s Kari Lake is among the relatively few high-profile, swing-state Republican candidates who have chosen to campaign on the Trump platform. You won’t find Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Not even Trump ally Herschel Walker, locked in a fight for a Georgia senate seat against Rev. Raphael Warnock, is there.
Other notable Trump defender absences on Truth Social include Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, and former California Rep. Duncan Hunter. Former Trump White House aide Steve Bannon has an inactive account. Mehmet Oz, who is dueling for Pennsylvania senator against John Fetterman, hasn’t been active since June.
That lack of support, plus legal and financial problems, lead some to predict the early demise of the platform. Trump has also talked about a merger with other far-right social media platforms like Parler.
Among the GOP pols and Trump allies on Truth Social are Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, opposed by Rep. Val Demings; Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, facing Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes; New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, running against Gov. Kathy Hochul; J.D. Vance, opposing Rep. Tim Ryan for senate in Ohio; Doug Mastriano, dueling Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro for governor; and Blake Masters, running against Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. But its support even from the right is lacking. And there is almost zero participation by moderates or liberals — besides those like yours truly there to snoop.
Maryland GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox attracted some of the few critical responses I could find, including one who wondered if he was “the conservative candidate that you say you are” since some “high profile people supporting you are not patriots.” Another chastised Cox for not having his signs outside a Baltimore area polling site, calling his campaign “a joke.”
Neil Parrott, another conservative Republican running for Congress in Maryland against Rep. David Trone, doesn’t have to worry about such criticism from the right. His account has only attracted 21 followers, compared to some 3,800 for Cox. Parrott’s “truths” — this app’s ironic term for tweets — rarely get likes, much less responses.
Which leads to that philosophical question: If a conservative yells into a social media echo chamber and no one hears, does he or she make a sound?
More on this here.