July 14, 2025, 5:24 p.m.
Three decades after Bill Clinton launched the first White House website and 10 years after Barack Obama sent the first presidential tweet, Donald Trump has radically changed how presidents use the internet, all but moving official pronouncements to his own private social media account.
What traditionally has been announced by the White House through official channels now debuts on the president’s Truth Social platform, blurring the lines between the personal and the public and worrying historians that important actions will not be properly archived and available for future study.
In just the last 30 days, the president has used Truth Social to announce four new ambassadors, nominate 11 judges, issue one pardon, withdraw the nominee to head NASA, fire the head of the National Portrait Gallery, announce a deal on U.S. Steel’s ownership, impose copper and steel tariffs, issue three disaster proclamations in two states, sternly warn Brazil and Israel to halt prosecutions of leaders, warn of dire consequences for BRICS nations, press Congress to pass rescissions, blast Japan over importation of American rice, announce a trade deal with Vietnam, disclose phone calls with the leaders of China and Russia, warn Israel “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” and disclose tariff letters sent to 24 countries and the European Union.
In past administrations, such things would be communicated through official White House news releases, briefings, or on the official White House website. That was true even after social media became more accepted in recent years.
Any doubt about the status the White House gives Truth Social postings was eliminated on July 7 when press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the tariff letters. “In an effort at transparency,” she said, “these letters will continue to be posted to Truth Social so you can enjoy them yourself.” Earlier, on June 26, when asked about cutting off funding for the Voice of America, Leavitt said the president “directed Congress to get that done in his Truth Social post yesterday.”
The White House declined to elaborate on whether this is a reflection simply of the president’s preferences or if they believe it is the best way to keep Americans informed. “Unlike his predecessors, President Trump shares his thoughts and actions directly with the American people in real time,” said assistant White House press secretary Liz Huston, in response to questions on the issue. “That’s why he is the most transparent, accessible, and effective President in American history.” She did not wish to explore the methods of that transparency.
Trump’s use of social media is not a surprise. He often seemed to be governing through Twitter in his first term, before being kicked off the platform in his final days in office “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after he used it to whip up his followers on Jan. 6, 2021. That led him to create his own platform, Truth Social, a site that lags far behind X (formerly Twitter) in size. Truth Social has 6.3 million active users, compared to 421 million for X.
Undeterred by Truth Social’s lack of reach, in his second term the president has moved far beyond past practices. In addition, the White House has halted other traditional forms of communication, including ending the long practice of releasing transcripts of all the president’s remarks and public statements. On this, too, the White House has been disinclined to explain.
When HuffPost wrote about the lack of transcripts in May, communications director Steven Cheung bristled. He demanded that HuffPost print his response “in full”:
“You must be truly f***ing stupid if you think we’re not transparent. The president regularly does multiple press engagements per day and they are streamed live on multiple platforms. We’ve even granted low-level outlets like HuffPo additional access to events, because we’re so transparent. For anyone to think otherwise proves they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Stop beclowning yourself.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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There has always been an adjustment period when a president adopts a new medium, most memorably radio by Franklin D. Roosevelt and television by John F. Kennedy. In neither case were they the first president to use it, but they mastered it and harnessed its possibilities.
Similarly, Trump is not the first to use the internet. “When I became president, there were just 50 websites on the World Wide Web,” said President Clinton in July 2000. “Now there are 17 million, and almost 50 million households on-line in the United States alone.” On Oct. 17, 1994, Clinton presided over the creation of the first White House website.
Two presidencies later, Barack Obama was the first president to tweet on May 18, 2015: “Hello. Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.” He also was the first to use Instagram and Facebook to get his message out.
Obama’s tweets bear no resemblance to Trump’s tweets and postings on Truth Social. There is a rawness to Trump’s.
“No one has ever operated as Donald Trump has operated,” said Barbara Perry, professor of presidential studies and co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia. “It is the equivalent of if FDR and Kennedy had hot microphones in the Oval Office and anytime they had an idea they would say the first thing that came to their minds.”
She said his methods are not surprising. “That got him elected to the presidency twice. So why wouldn’t he continue and double down on it?” she said, pointing to his recent legislative successes.
George Edwards III, the Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies emeritus at Texas A&M University, said he doesn’t believe that Trump’s habits are effective at moving broader public opinion beyond his base or influencing foreign governments. “He’s trying to get Brazil to do something, so he makes a public demand on them," Edwards said. "But if you threaten them, normally that’s not the best way to negotiate with friends or enemies. But that’s what he’s doing.”
Both Edwards and Perry say they are concerned about how challenging this will make writing the history of Trump’s time in office. “Obviously, if we don’t have records of what the president has said, it’s going to be very difficult to write the history,” Edwards said.
Perry, who has started compiling an oral history of Trump’s first term, says she is troubled by the lack of record-keeping. “I can’t believe we’re having to bring this up again after the first term and him taking official documents with him that were supposed to be preserved and turned over to the National Archives,” she said. “Are they being archived anywhere today?”
Trump seems unbothered. He seems to delight in the criticism when he posts memes on Truth Social depicting himself as a particularly buff Superman, the pope, or a king. The White House staff even encourages him. After criticism of the Superman post, the White House posted on its X, Instagram, and Facebook platforms a picture of a white poster board on the North Lawn that read: “oMg, diD tHe wHiTE hOuSe reALLy PosT tHiS?” The post’s caption was defiant: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say we can’t post banger memes.”
Given the president’s clear affinity for social media and the frequency of his posts, it is not realistic to think he is going to change over the next three-and-a-half years. Historians—who may or may not know that “banger” means really good or popular—are accustomed to poring through official documents and releases. When they look back on this presidency, they are just going to have to adjust, as they did to FDR’s use of radio and JFK’s mastery of television.
