Twitter use by Donald Trump

Donald Trump's use of social media attracted worldwide attention since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his first presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his first term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers.

For most of Trump's first term, his account on Twitter, where he often posted controversial and false statements, remained unmoderated in the name of "public interest". Congress performed its own form of moderation: in July 2019, the House of Representatives voted mostly along party lines to censor him for "racist comments" he had tweeted. Following the censure, his tweets only accelerated. An investigation by The New York Times published in November 2019, found that, during his time in office to date, Trump had retweeted numerous conspiracy theories or fringe content.

During his 2020 reelection campaign, he falsely suggested that postal voting or electoral fraud may compromise the election, prompting Twitter to either remove such tweets or label them as disputed. After his election loss, Trump persistently undermined the election results in the weeks leading to Joe Biden's inauguration. His tweets played a role in inciting the January 2021, attack of the US Capitol during the formal counting of electoral votes. Though the Senate eventually acquitted Trump during his second impeachment, Twitter permanently suspended his @realDonaldTrump handle, followed by the official account of his campaign (@TeamTrump) and the accounts of allies who posted on his behalf, such as the Trump campaign digital director. Twitter also deleted three tweets by Trump on the @POTUS handle and barred access to the presidential account until Joe Biden's inauguration.

In November 2022, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated his account, and the first tweet since 2021 was made in August 2023 about his mugshot from Fulton County Jail, but the account remained inactive until he tweeted again in August 2024.

From his official declaration of candidacy in 2015, Donald Trump benefited from large numbers of supporters active on social media. Some supporters called themselves "Centipedes" online.

As president, Trump preferred to communicate over social media, announcing policy changes and the dismissals of staff members there. Trump largely bypassed the White House Press Secretary, and his administration ended the daily White House press briefing. Trump preferred "to dictate and dominate the news cycle"; his communications emphasized his political grievances, promoted conspiracy theories, and attacked those he regarded as enemies.

Trump used the retweet feature on Twitter to forward messages he agreed with (often posts praising him), no matter how obscure their authors were. At times, Trump retweeted himself, and sometimes commented "so true" while doing so.

An investigation by The New York Times published in November 2019, found that, during his time in office to date, Trump had already retweeted at least 145 accounts that "have pushed conspiracy or fringe content, including more than two dozen that have since been suspended."