Who started Truth Social?

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) is the parent company, and it was founded by Trump in 2021. The platform itself, Truth Social, a social network that works much like Twitter where users post short messages called "truths" and share others' posts as "retruths," launched publicly in early 2022.

The origin story has a few more names in it than Trump alone. According to Reuters, Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, two former cast members of Trump's TV show The Apprentice, were central to the founding of TMTG, having pitched the idea of a social network to Trump in January 2021. They helped get the company off the ground before Trump became the dominant public figure attached to it.

The immediate trigger was Trump's removal from Twitter and Facebook after January 6, 2021. Those bans cut off the direct communication channel he had used throughout his first presidency to reach supporters, announce policy, and bypass traditional media. Truth Social was the answer: a platform he owned, where no one could suspend him.

To go public on the stock market, TMTG used a mechanism called a SPAC, a special purpose acquisition company, essentially a shell company created specifically to merge with a private business and list it on an exchange without a traditional IPO. That SPAC was called Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC). The merger went through in early 2024, putting TMTG on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol DJT, Trump's initials. That listing made the platform one of his most valuable disclosed financial assets, at least on paper.