Desperate Trump Returns to X as Poll Numbers Keep Tanking

After being absent for nearly a year, Donald Trump returned to X (formerly Twitter) early Monday morning, posting a new campaign ad shortly before 3 a.m. E.T.

The post and campaign ad used a question taken from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign for president, when he asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Trump’s post makes this point by also claiming, “Our economy is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline.”

Trump was banned from Twitter more than three years ago following the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Shortly after acquiring the microblogging service, Elon Musk reinstated Trump to the platform in November 2022. But Trump refrained from posting to the platform, except for posting his Georgia mug shot in 2023 after being indicted on election interference charges. Commentators have speculated that he was either deliberately focusing on his own social network, Truth Social, or he has some legal requirement to post on his own social network.

So why has he posted on X after so long? Perhaps he’s desperate after plummeting in the polls thanks to the surging Kamala Harris campaign. He’s lost a lot of ground in the last month after President Biden withdrew from the race and after Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate has done him few, if any, favors, inviting attacks from Democrats calling Republicans weird.

Trump’s time on Twitter, from the start of his 2016 presidential campaign through his four years as president, was marked by belligerence, schoolyard insults against his opponents, and incitement of violence. From Trump’s standpoint, his four years as president were probably the peak of his political career, so maybe he’s desperately trying to bring the old magic to revive his flagging fortunes and make himself feel better. Maybe Musk asked him to post again in advance of his interview with the egotistical tech mogul Monday night. Or maybe he’s returning to X because his own social network is losing a lot of money.