Monday was a normal day for President Trump. He took questions from reporters in the Oval Office; met with members of the Indiana University football team; and dined with law enforcement officials in the White House Rose Garden. As the sun sets, another familiar routine begins: late-night social media posting. The president's Truth Social account posted 55 messages between 10:14 p.m. and 1:12 a.m.
Since the start of his second term, Trump’s Truth Social account has grown from about 8.6 million followers to 12.6 million. According to the analysis, Trump - with the help of staff - has posted at least 8,800 times.
Monday was just one such late-night posting spree. Since Trump returned to the White House, Truth Social has seen similar situations occur 44 times: at least 12 posts between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. On December 1 last year, from 8:17 pm until nearly midnight, the president's account posted nearly 160 pieces of content - the most posts in a single day during his second term.
The account's most active nights are typically driven by videos and screenshots from X and other social media users. For example, in the early morning of January 5 this year, just days after a successful military operation in Venezuela, Trump’s account posted nearly 90 pieces of content in one hour.
Trump's executive assistant Natalie Harp plays a key role in the Trump Truth Social event. She would send piles of typed drafts of social media posts to the president for his approval, people familiar with the matter said.
The proposed content often recycles material from other accounts that Harp or advisers think Trump would like.
People familiar with the matter said Harp would then log into the president's account - sometimes even outside normal business hours - and post these Trump-approved messages in bulk. Trump personally reviews everything posted from his account. White House officials said that while Harp often posts on Trump's behalf, the president himself also posts some messages himself.
Harp frustrated some White House officials because she typically did not share draft posts with the chief of staff's office, communications advisers or national security officials. Harp has told others that she works for Trump and only listens to Trump himself.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement: "Truth Social has never been more popular than it is now, and the reason is that President Trump can express his thoughts directly and unfiltered to the American people without being taken out of context by biased media."
"We won't discuss how the internal process works, but no social media tool is more effective than Truth."
Trump’s account often shares AI images that portray opponents as cartoonish and himself as a powerful figure.
About 1 in 10 plain text posts will insult a person or group using words such as "liar", "despicable person", "loser" and "low IQ". The phrase "Fake News" appears nearly 140 times.