AFP

Donald Trump promised his Truth Social platform would offer a home for free speech, an unfiltered way to reach people.

Six months later, the former US president’s amplification of conspiratorial memes and messages after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago estate indicates that extremist content has flourished.

Still, with midterm elections looming, an AFP analysis shows his new bullhorn may be far less politically relevant than his past pronouncements on Twitter and Facebook.

“His reach is much smaller,” said Mike Rothschild, the author of a book on the QAnon conspiracy theory. “Truth Social is pretty much MAGA-only territory.”

Trump’s August 30 posting spree on Truth Social indicates a lurch toward the darkest corners of conspiracy theory, almost two years after he lost the presidency to Joe Biden.

Trump interacted with a meme that was shared in reply to a post highlighting the writings of “Q,” the anonymous persona whose posts on fringe forums gave rise to QAnon and its baseless claims about a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles including Hillary Clinton.

“Trump has certainly amplified Q content before. He had retweeted Q believers or memes over 300 times on Twitter,” Rothschild said. “But he had never shared something directly connected to a Q drop before.”

The meme Trump shared referenced “the storm,” a mass unsealing of indictments promised in QAnon lore that would culminate in his return to the White House.

He also re-posted images that put the words “your enemy is not in Russia” over the faces of top Democrats, including Biden.

It was a sign of what Truth Social — and Trump’s potential 2024 campaign — could look like as the November 8 midterms approach.

“Trump’s most ardent supporters will follow him wherever he goes,” said Caroline Orr Bueno, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland.

“So although his messages may be reaching a smaller audience, those who are still following him are likely a more hardcore group of supporters who may be more easily incited to violence.”

– Echo chamber –

Truth Social launched in February 2022 as Trump’s response to his ban from Twitter and two-year-suspension from Facebook following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

But Trump has just four million followers on Truth Social — a far cry from the 88.8 million he had on Twitter or the 35.4 million he had on Facebook.

“It’s almost entirely Trump supporters,” said David Thiel, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, of Truth Social’s user base.

Trump’s Truth Social posts are regularly promoted on other platforms popular with his supporters, such as Telegram and the far-right forum “The Donald,” as well as on mainstream sites. Major Republican Party players also repeat his talking points.

But the direct pipeline to the public he had as president is gone.

Truth Social had 1.19 million monthly active users on Apple iPhones in July, according to data.ai, a company that tracks app metrics, compared with the 237.8 million daily active users Twitter counted in its latest quarterly report.

The app has been downloaded 3.08 million times globally since February, while Twitter and Facebook have logged 97 million and 341 million downloads respectively in the same time frame — and billions more in their existence.

“Even though Trump has this megaphone and is able to get attention for whatever new crazy thing he posts on Truth Social, it is several multiples less powerful than Twitter, several multiples less powerful than Facebook,” said Jared Holt, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit London-based think tank focused on extremism. “It is a very closed feedback loop.”

A loyal base of Truth Social users who express support for Trump and share misinformation about topics such as the 2020 election remains.

“Truth Social has become a refuge of sorts for people and content that have been banned from other platforms,” Orr Bueno said.

NewsGuard, a service that tracks online misinformation, found 88 QAnon-promoting accounts with over 10,000 followers on Truth Social, including 32 that were previously booted off Twitter. Forty-seven of those accounts were verified by the Trump platform.

At least one app provider seems to have taken note. Google has not approved Truth Social for its store used by Android smartphone users, citing problems with content moderation.

“It appears to attract people with extremist views and then provides a safe haven where they can feed off each other without worrying about being reported or banned,” Orr Bueno said. “It’s an environment that can be easily exploited by those seeking to incite violence or radicalize people.”

Truth Social did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Donald Trump branded Joe Biden an “enemy of the state” Saturday as he hit back at the US president’s assertion that the Republican and his supporters are undermining American democracy, and slammed last month’s FBI raid of his Florida home.

Making his first public appearance since the August 8 raid, Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania that the search was a “travesty of justice” and warned it would produce “a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen.”

“There can be no more vivid example of the very real threats from American freedom than just a few weeks ago, you saw, when we witnessed one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history,” Trump claimed, despite long-standing protocols by which the Justice Department and the FBI act independently of the White House.

Trump told cheering supporters at the “Save America” gathering in the city of Wilkes-Barre that the “egregious abuse of the law” was going to produce “a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen.”

He also hit back at Biden’s speech this week in which the president said his predecessor and Republican supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Speaking in Philadelphia, the cradle of US democracy, on Thursday, the president launched an extraordinary assault on those Republicans who embrace Trump’s “Make America Great Again” ideology — and urged his own supporters to fight back in what he billed as a “battle for the Soul of the Nation.”

Trump slammed it as the “most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.”

“He’s an enemy of the state. You want to know the truth. The enemy of the state is him,” Trump said.

“Republicans in the MAGA movement are not the ones trying to undermine our democracy,” continued Trump, who has repeatedly claimed the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, was rigged; and whose party has made unfounded claims of voter fraud a central plank of their platform.

“We are the ones trying to save our democracy, very simple. The danger to democracy comes from the radical left, not from the right,” Trump added.

He was appearing at the rally ahead of November’s midterm elections, which could see Biden’s Democrats lose control of both houses of Congress.

– ‘Top secret’ files –

Even although Trump is not on the ballot, Biden, 79, is seeking to turn the vote into a referendum on his predecessor in a bid to hold on to the Senate and House of Representatives.

At the Wilkes-Barre rally — where Trump took to the stage to support his candidate in the Senate race, TV physician Mehmet Oz — Trump supporter Edward Young said he had been “disgusted” by Biden’s speech.

“He declared war on me. He declared war on half of America,” Young told AFP.

The duelling visits by Biden and Trump to Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, come as the Republican is under increasing legal pressure over the documents found by the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The Justice Department has said in court filings that highly classified government documents, including some marked “Top Secret,” were discovered in Trump’s personal office during the raid.

A detailed list of what was seized also showed Trump held on to more than 11,000 unclassified government records that he claims are his to keep — but legally are owned by the National Archives.

Among the papers seized were 18 documents labelled “top secret”, 53 labelled “secret” and another 31 marked “confidential.”

Of those, seven top secret files, 17 secret files and three confidential files were retrieved from Trump’s private office.

Agents also found several dozen empty folders labelled “classified” in the office, raising speculation that sensitive documents may have been lost, destroyed or moved.

Trump, who is keeping supporters and commentators guessing about whether he intends to run for president again 2024, has sued to have the documents turned over to a neutral “special master,” a move that could slow the government’s probe.

Amazon announced Saturday that its big budget series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, had marked the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video — with 25 million viewers. 

With this flagship production that started streaming Friday, Prime Video aims to counter the lure of HBO and its prequel to the hit series “Game of Thrones”, “House of the Dragon”, which began airing on August 21. 

HBO also has said it had its best premiere, with its prequel, with nearly 10 million viewers in the United States alone. 

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power attracted more than 25 million global viewers on its first day, breaking all previous records, marking the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video,” a company statement said. It has aired the first two episodes. 

“It is somehow fitting that Tolkien’s stories — among the most popular of all time, and what many consider to be the true origin of the fantasy genre — have led us to this proud moment,” said Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios.

The series, which will air until October 14, is crucial for Amazon, which wants to play in the ultra-competitive streaming landscape, where Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max are already battling it out. 

“The Rings of Power” is set during Tolkien’s Second Age in Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of “The Hobbit” and “Lord of the Rings”, Tolkien’s cult trilogy which has already been adapted for film.

Amazon paid $250 million to buy the rights, and some $465 million was spent on the first season alone. The group having committed to five seasons, the final sum should top one billion dollars by far. 

After scrapping a second attempt to get its new 30-story rocket off the ground due to a fuel leak, NASA announced on Saturday it will not try again during its current window of opportunity, which ends early next week.

Determined by the position of the Earth and Moon, the current launch period for NASA’s Artemis 1 mission ends Tuesday and is “definitely off the table,” said Jim Free, associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development, at a press conference Saturday, without confirming a new date.

The next possible launch windows according to NASA are September 19 to October 4 and then October 17 to 31.

Millions around the globe and crowds gathered on beaches in Florida had hoped to witness the historic blastoff of the Space Launch System (SLS), but a leak near the base of the rocket was found as ultra-cold liquid hydrogen was pumped in.

“The launch director waived off today’s Artemis I launch,” NASA said in a statement. “Multiple troubleshooting efforts to address the area of the leak… did not fix the issue.”

The latest postponement “was the right decision after you develop this kind of leak,” astronaut Victor Glover told reporters.

“These (are) really incredibly complex machines. When you see a scrub, people should gain confidence, not lose confidence.” 

The initial launch attempt on Monday was also halted after engineers detected a fuel leak and a sensor showed that one of the rocket’s four main engines was too hot.

– Next month? –

The rocket will likely have to be hauled back into its assembly building to undergo certification tests that are carried out periodically.

Soon after Saturday’s launch was scrubbed, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that a next attempt may have to be put off until mid-October because early next month a crew will use the Kennedy Space Center to travel to the International Space Station.

Early in the morning, launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson had given the go-ahead to start filling the rocket’s tanks with cryogenic fuel.

About three million liters of ultra-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen were due to be pumped into the spacecraft, but the process soon hit problems, with Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin later describing the issue as “not a manageable leak.”

The purpose of the Artemis 1 mission is to verify that the Orion capsule, which sits atop the SLS rocket, is safe to carry astronauts in the future.

Mannequins equipped with sensors are standing in for astronauts on the mission and will record acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.

– Apollo’s twin sister –

Once launched, it will take several days for the spacecraft to reach the Moon, flying around 60 miles (100 kilometers) at its closest approach.

The capsule will fire its engines to get to a distant retrograde orbit (DRO) of 40,000 miles beyond the Moon, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.

The trip is expected to last around six weeks and one of its main objectives is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.

On its return to Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield will have to withstand speeds of 25,000 miles per hour and a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) — roughly half as hot as the Sun.

Artemis is named after the twin sister of the Greek god Apollo, after whom the first Moon missions were named.

Unlike the Apollo missions, which sent only white men to the Moon between 1969 and 1972, Artemis missions will see the first person of color and the first woman step foot on the lunar surface.

A successful Artemis 1 mission would come as a huge relief to the US space agency, after years of delays and cost overruns.

A government audit estimates the Artemis program’s cost will grow to $93 billion by 2025, with each of its first four missions clocking in at a whopping $4.1 billion per launch.

The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts to the Moon without landing on its surface.

The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest, with later missions envisaging a lunar space station and a sustainable presence on the lunar surface.

A crewed trip to the red planet aboard Orion, which would last several years, could be attempted by the end of the 2030s.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered on Saturday to mediate in the standoff over a Russian-occupied nuclear power station in Ukraine stoking fears of an atomic disaster.

The offer came hours before the global atomic energy watchdog said that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility had been disconnected from its last remaining main power line to the grid and was now relying on a reserve line.

Alarm has grown in recent weeks over shelling in the area of Europe’s largest nuclear plant.

Ukraine said Friday it had bombed a Russian base in the nearby town of Energodar, destroying three artillery systems as well as an ammunition depot.

Erdogan on Saturday told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that “Turkey can play a facilitator role in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, as they did in the grain deal,” the Turkish presidency said. 

Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain exporters, was forced to halt almost all deliveries after Russia invaded in late February, raising fears of a global food crisis.

Exports of grain across Black Sea ports resumed after Kyiv and Moscow signed a deal in July, with the United Nations and Turkey acting as guarantors. 

There was no immediate mention of Erdogan having also spoken to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday to offer his mediation.

– Gas deliveries halted –

Last month, Erdogan warned of the danger of a nuclear disaster when he visited the western city of Lviv for talks with the Ukrainian leader. 

The Turkish president said he wanted to avoid “another Chernobyl”, referring to the world’s worst nuclear accident in another part of Ukraine in 1986, when it was still part of the Soviet Union.

This week, a 14-strong team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited Zaporizhzhia, with the UN nuclear watchdog’s chief Rafael Grossi saying the site had been damaged in fighting.

“Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has once again lost the connection to its last remaining main external power line,” the IAEA said in a statement Saturday.

“But the facility is continuing to supply electricity to the grid through a reserve line,” the agency added.

The Russian invasion of pro-Western Ukraine has killed thousands of people and caused millions to flee their homes.

Western powers have reacted by dispatching military aid to Kyiv in a bid to stem the Russian advance and slapping economic sanctions on Moscow.

On Friday, the Group of Seven major industrial democracies vowed to move urgently to set a price cap on Russian oil imports, a crucial source of revenue for Moscow.

As if on cue, Russian energy giant Gazprom said it had halted gas deliveries to Germany for an indefinite period as there were leaks in a turbine. 

Its German manufacturer said that was not a valid reason to halt gas flows.

– ‘We need more unity’ –

EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said Saturday the European Union was in better shape to handle the possibility of a total halt in Russian gas deliveries, thanks to storage capacity and energy-saving measures.

“We are well prepared to resist Russia’s extreme use of the gas weapon,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the European House-Ambrosetti economic forum. 

In the European Union, “gas storage is currently at about 80 percent, thanks to the diversification of supplies,” even if the situation varies from one country to another, Gentiloni said.

Zelensky picked up on the theme in his evening address Saturday.

“Russia wants to destroy the normal life of every European — in all countries of our continent,” he said, referring to the shutdown of the Nord Stream pipeline.

Where it could not do so by military means, it weaponised its energy resources, he added.

“To protect ourselves in Europe, we need more unity, more coordination, more help to each other.”

Ukraine has accused Russia of storing ammunition at Zaporizhzhia and deploying hundreds of soldiers there.

It also suspects Moscow is intending to divert power from the plant to the nearby Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014. 

With an increasingly acute crisis leaving many residents of Mississippi’s capital without drinkable water, soldiers in fatigues have been called in to help, using forklifts and diggers to unload huge pallets of bottled water for distribution to those in dire need.

The city of Jackson, where 80 percent of the population is Black and poverty is rife, has experienced water crises for years. But this one is particularly severe, with many residents lacking clean running water for nearly a week. 

Days of major flooding disrupted the operation of a critical but aging water treatment plant.

So when residents turn on the tap, brown water — undrinkable, even if boiled — sometimes sputters out, under very low pressure. 

“At my home the water is running very slowly. It’s a horrible situation in the entire city,” said Jackson resident Mary Jones, 55.

– White House gets involved –

“No one seemed to know how to solve the problem. But now that the White House has gotten involved, hopefully we can get some fresh, clean running water again, because this has been going on for years,” said Jones, a disabled widow.

“It’s utterly ridiculous that we have to go through this.”

Indeed, the problem has received the attention of Washington. President Joe Biden has promised federal resources to help Mississippi resolve the crisis.

Major repair work is under way, but for now, people rely on bottled water that arrives stacked high on pallets.

Residents are entitled to two cases each when they go to a distribution center.

“I’m not able to cook like I want to cook, not able to brush my teeth like I want to,” said Natina Thompson, a 41-year-old bus driver.

She said she was “eternally grateful” that the National Guard and others were now providing help.  

Mary Jones said she goes to several sites around town to get enough water to help older people in her neighborhood who cannot get out.

“You need to sacrifice for our neighbors, you know, because that’s what we do in Mississippi,” she told AFP. “We love each other and we unite (with) each other in any type of situation.”

People waiting in long lines in their cars to get water appeared patient. 

Many compared their situation to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan from 2014 to 2016. That city’s water supply was dangerously contaminated with lead because of mismanagement and neglect.

– Echoes of Flint –

“I hope we won’t be like Flint,” said Tracey Edwards, a retiree who blames this mess on city officials.  

“We can’t drink it. We can’t brush our teeth with it. I’m wondering if there’s anything hazardous in the water that, long-term, may affect the residents of Jackson,” said Edwards.

“That’s something we have  to be aware of.”

Jackson is the largest city in Mississippi, which is one of the poorest US states. City finances are troubled; the tax base shrank for years as many more affluent white residents moved to the suburbs. Today, a quarter of Jackson’s residents live in poverty.

One resident who did not wish her name to be used described her daily routine.

“I need some water… because I do have grandchildren and children. And that’s why I’m out in this heat trying to get it.”