Former U.S. President Donald Trump released two campaign ads on X on Monday (August 12), marking his first engagement on this social media platform owned by Elon Musk in nearly a year. Shortly after, it was announced that he would be interviewed on the same platform by Musk.
The highly anticipated interview is scheduled to take place on Monday evening at 8 PM Eastern Time and will be live-streamed on X.
Just hours before the interview, Trump posted two campaign ads on his personal X account. This marks the first time the former president has posted on this social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, since August 2023.
The first ad, lasting 2 minutes and 30 seconds, featured a news anchor narrating Trump’s electoral victory in 2016, his inauguration speech in 2017, and his accomplishments during his presidency, before fast-forwarding to 2024 and highlighting the legal challenges faced by the former president.
Following this, Trump also wrote a post and shared a promotional image designed for his interview with Musk that evening.
His account later shared a second ad, lasting 34 seconds and including a link to his campaign website. In the video, Trump looked directly at the camera and announced a series of campaign goals, such as “driving out communists, Marxists, and fascists” among others. The ad concluded with the text “Join President Trump in the fight for America” on the screen.
Following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, both Twitter and Facebook suspended Trump’s accounts. Trump later created his own social media platform, “Truth Social,” and for much of this election cycle, he has chosen to utilize his platform for campaign activities.
Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 and restored Trump’s account in November of the same year. However, Trump did not immediately return to the platform and only shared a photo on his X account in August 2023. The photo was a headshot taken inside a prison in Atlanta, Georgia, where district attorney Fani Willis, who was in charge of the interference in the 2020 U.S. elections case in Georgia, had asked Trump to surrender himself for registration and photography.
Under the photo in that post, Trump wrote: “Election interference, never surrender!”