CNN
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President Donald Trump’s feed on his Truth Social platform, like his Twitter feed of yore, is a real-time window into the mind of the most powerful man in the world.
Who does he want to offend? Who has offended him? What are his most out-there ideas? When is the right time to buy stocks?
It’s where you can find him reminiscing on his infamous post about the taco bowls in Trump Tower to commemorate, or troll, Cinco de Mayo.
“I love Hispanics!” he wrote back in 2016. Now he has resurfaced the post on Truth Social at a time when cities like Chicago have canceled celebrations out of concern they would become targets for immigration authorities ramping up deportations on Trump’s orders.
There’s no doubt he was trolling with the AI-generated image of himself as the pope, but it’s not clear who is the target as the Catholic Church, still officially in mourning, begins the process of picking its next leader. On Monday in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters he didn’t have anything to do with creating the image. But he defended it. “Catholics loved it,” he said.
On Sunday, Trump posted video of his appearance on “Meet the Press” where he compares himself to a notorious gangster.
“I’ve been investigated more than the late, great — as they say at my rallies — Alphonse Capone,” he told NBC News. “Alphonse Capone was a nasty man. He was a — the highest-level gangster. And I have been investigated more than Al Capone.”
Capone served part of his federal sentence for tax evasion as inmate #85 at Alcatraz. Who knows if that bit of trivia helped inspire Trump’s latest outrageous policy proposal, announced on Truth Social.
Trump wants to close Alcatraz as one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations and reopen it as a prison. “The Rock” is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the most-visited US national park in 2024.
“The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE,” he wrote after complaining about judges who don’t want him to remove undocumented immigrants without a hearing.
Then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy announced the closure of the prison in 1962 because it was too expensive, too impractical and too small.
A group of American Indians occupied Alcatraz in the late 1960s, but were removed after 19 months. The ordeal helped push Congress to make the Rock a national park in the 1970s under President Richard Nixon, who visited San Francisco for a campaign stop in September 1972 before winning California in his landslide reelection victory.
Ronald Reagan, a former California governor, briefly considered housing Cuban refugees on Alcatraz in the early 1980s, but it was later given some protection as a National Historic Landmark during Reagan’s second term.
Trump’s idea — which seems not fully baked quite yet — was described by former House speaker and longtime California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, whose district includes most of San Francisco, as “not a serious one.”
But aggravating San Franciscans might be a side benefit of the idea for Trump, who has also tried to eliminate a special trust Congress set up to oversee another park, the Presidio of San Francisco.
Perhaps his idea about Alcatraz got Trump thinking about movies like “The Rock,” which could have inspired his subsequent Truth to declare the foreign production of films as a national security risk and threaten 100% tariffs “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Later he encouraged people, again, to buy the $Trump meme coin. Those who hold the largest quantities of the coins, which are described as an expression of support for Trump, will be invited to a gala dinner, he said. Inflating the value of the coin could also enrich Trump. The White House has said there is no conflict of interest since Trump’s children control his assets in a trust.
Trump’s Truth Social feed can also have valuable information, such as when he tipped off supporters that “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” just before he hit pause on some tariffs for 90 days and sent markets soaring in early April.
Hawk-eyed crypto traders might have been able to profit when Trump announced intentions to stockpile cryptocurrency back in March and included what CNN’s report referred to as relatively obscure tokens: Solana, XRP and Cardano.
Trump frequently retweets bits of video in which he or his policies are praised, but he will also single out critics.
Republican strategist and Fox News analyst Karl Rove was in Trump’s sights over the weekend after Rove criticized the Trump-as-pope post.
“Things like tweeting out a picture of you as the pope is deeply offensive to a great many people,” Rove said on Fox News. He also criticized Trump’s tariff policies, saying they will drive up prices and make Trump “Mr. Scrooge.”
Rove said Trump should give a White House address to explain tariffs to Americans and reach deals to drive them down.
Trump was apparently watching, because he responded on Truth Social.
“I don’t need to have Karl Rove of Fox News to tell me what to do,” Trump wrote. “The guy’s a total Loser who’s been wrong about almost everything!”
