[23] Former U.S. president Donald Trump raised the prospect of building a new social media platform after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter in 2021, following the 2021 United States Capitol attack.

[36][37][38][39] In an October 2021 SEC filing, the special-purpose acquisition company Yunhong International stated its goal was to "capitalize on growing opportunities created by consumer/lifestyle businesses that have their primary operations in Asia.

[41][32] An additional backer of the Trump social media venture, becoming the CFO of Digital World Acquisition, was Brazilian parliamentarian Luiz Philippe of Orléans-Braganza, a monarchist allied with Jair Bolsonaro.

[48][49] Hours after the press release, a person identifying themselves as a part of the hacker collective Anonymous used Shodan to discover domains related to the company, eventually locating what appeared to be a publicly-accessible mobile beta of the service.

[53][54] The Washington Post reported that Trump Media paid a $240,000 finder's fee as part of the arrangement, allegedly to a party associated with Digital World.

According to a government transcript, an informant referenced the process as "the full Singapore with a double dip, as we call it, with having the U.K. thrown in there, just to give it that added cleanliness and polishing off.

[9] Gettr CEO Jason Miller, a former Trump advisor, praised Truth Social and said the platform will cause Facebook and Twitter to "lose even more market share".

[4] Truth Social is run by Trump Media & Technology Group, and headed by former California GOP Congressman Devin Nunes.

[69] TMTG has advertised for developers with skills in using Elixir, the programming language used to build Pleroma, a social networking software akin to Mastodon.

[70] On October 21, 2021, the Software Freedom Conservancy group stated they suspected Truth Social had violated Mastodon's AGPLv3 license by not offering its source code to all users.

[96] Some commentators noted that this self-declared immunity appeared to rely on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law Trump firmly opposed during his presidency.

[125] In early April 2022, Bloomberg News reported that shares in Truth Social's publicly traded holding company Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) had fallen 31% from the time of the app's launch in late February[126] and 64% from its all-time high.

Trump Media says it does not track traditional performance indicators such as daily or monthly visitor numbers, revenue per user, or ad impressions, saying in their FEC filing that they "might not align with the best interests" of the company or its stockholders.

[151] Following Musk's comments, Nunes reiterated that Trump was committed to Truth Social, and would not rejoin Twitter even if his ban were to be lifted.

[158] In early September 2022, Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), the SPAC set to acquire TMTG, secured an extension from shareholders for up to six months for it to perform the deal.

[159] In the same month, Politico writer Jack Shafer wrote about the "slow-cooking financial disaster that has been simmering in Donald Trump's business Crock-Pot".

[162] In January 2023, the New York Times reported that, while Truth Social now carried advertising, it was limited to niche products, without the participation of major brands.

[163] In March 2023, The Guardian reported that "Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties".

[174] In June 2022, federal regulators investigated whether TMTG had illegally coordinated with its holding company, Digital World Acquisition Corp, prior to the latter going public.

[181][182] Wilkerson was one of the company's earliest employees; he held the post of senior vice president of operations, and was intimately involved in internal TMTG business strategy discussions.

[182][183] In June 2023, U.S. prosecutors charged three Florida men for insider trading allegedly related to DWAC (Digital World Acquisition Corp) as part of Trump's social media merger deal in 2021.

[188] Following the merger of DWAC into TMTG, the merged company was listed on the NASDAQ stock market under the ticker symbol DJT, after Trump's initials.

[...] Nothing mentioned on 'Nuclear,' a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover - WE GAVE THEM MUCH.

Multiple news sources noted that these posts represented a marked increase in the intensity of his rhetoric, explicitly referencing QAnon and 4chan conspiracy theories.

[208] Three organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Democratic Council of America,[209][210] criticized Trump's comment as condescending and as repeating a "dual loyalty" antisemitic trope.

[211][212] Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director at the Coalition for Jewish Values,[213] on the contrary, stated that he supported Trump's comments and did not consider them as antisemitic.

[237][238][239] Axios reported that Truth Social had given a verified account to the white nationalist advocate[240] Nick Fuentes, who has been banned from Twitter and Facebook.

[241] On August 11, 2022, a gunman, identified as Ricky Shiffer, wearing body armor and armed with a nail gun and an AR-15 style rifle attempted to storm the offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[243][244] Since Shiffer's actions, some Truth Social users — including a verified account with 74,000 followers who said he was a designer for the site — claimed the attack was a false flag, without providing evidence,[245] and the calls for violence were posts planted by federal law enforcement officials or Democratic operatives.

[248][249] Axios reported in February 2022 that Truth Social had official-looking accounts for Fox News, TMZ, the National Football League, NASA, NASCAR, and others with legitimate-appearing links and logos, which had not been created by the named entities.