Trump returns to X as Harris pulls ahead in polls, donations and crowd size

12 August 2024

It’s been almost a full year since Donald Trump posted to X (formerly Twitter), but on Monday the Republican presidential nominee shared a two-minute thirty-second video to the social media site. The last time the convicted ex-president once again running for re-election had posted to the Elon-Musk-owned social media site was August 24, 2023, when he posted his mug shot. Monday marks the seven-year anniversary of the deadly neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, one of the worst periods for Trump during his presidency, after his “both sides” remarks.

Trump’s return – it’s unknown if it’s temporary or permanent – comes as Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic presidential opponent, is beating him in the polls, in campaign donations, and in rally crowd size.

According to the FiveThirtyEight national presidential polling average, Harris is beating Trump by an increasing margin, now 2.4 points. The last time Trump beat Harris in a poll listed on the site was one taken July 31-August 4, where he came in two points ahead of the Vice President. In the last 36 polls FiveThirtyEight has posted, Harris has beaten Trump 28 times, and tied with him twice.

The Harris campaign took in $310 million in July, more than double the Trump campaign’s $137 million, as Politico reported, despite the ex-president surviving an assassination attempt, announcing his vice-presidential pick, and holding the Republican National Convention.

The Harris-Walz campaign held rallies in swing states last week, each attracting crowds between eight and fourteen thousand, according to Axios, which reports the large crowd size has been “clearly driving Trump nuts.”

In Trump’s post on X Monday morning (below), which got more than 7 million views in just one hour, crowd size was definitely on display as was the ex-president’s anger and grievances.

It begins with audio announcing his 2016 presidential election win and shows crowds from his inauguration, before segueing into the FBI’s execution of a search warrant on his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence. The Bureau recovered hundreds of documents with various levels of classification markings, including top secret. Among the documents with the highest levels of classification reportedly were top government nuclear secrets. Trump was indicted for that case but a judge he appointed tossed it last month. Prosecutors, which charged the ex-president with unlawfully removing, retaining, and refusing to return those documents, are appealing.

And while clearly a campaign video – The Independent reports is was first released on the platform as an ad – it also comes on he day Trump announced he plans to sue DOJ for the Mar-a-Lago “raid” for $100 million.

“They’re not coming after me they’re coming after you and I just happen to be standing in their way,” Trump says in the video.

Trump’s post on X also comes as he is slated to sit down Monday night with the platform’s billionaire owner, who has altered X to become a vehicle that promotes Trump, MAGA, and Trumpism. The conversation is being promoted as an “interview,” although Musk is not a journalist and has publicly affirmed his support for Trump’s campaign.

X “has become a personal megaphone” for Musk’s “provocative political views,” The Washington Post reported Monday, noting “the billionaire’s feed often reads more like a right-wing activist account, with alarmist posts about immigration and missives against ‘woke’ ideology.”

“Musk, after officially endorsing former president Donald Trump,” Wired reported last week, “has also boosted baseless conspiracies of a ‘coup’ following Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, and insinuated that the Trump assassination attempt might have been the result of an intentional failure on the part of the Secret Service. After endorsing Trump, Musk announced that he was starting a pro-Trump political action committee (PAC), and initially committed to donate $45 million a month, before backtracking.”

Watch the Trump video below or at this link.

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