Trump and Truth Social
Donald J. Trump posts A LOT on his poorly made and visited Twitter clone, Truth Social. He even directs government policy from it.
This analysis is meant to show how quickly I can utilize AI (specifically, Claude in this example) to tell a compelling and impactful data story.
This analysis was created, visualized, and published here in about two hours.
The clock doesn't lie, though he does.
Donald Trump posts on Truth Social at all hours — but the data from 7,886 posts reveals a surprisingly consistent pattern. He is most active in the early evening, with 6 PM Eastern his single busiest hour. A strong morning window runs from 9 to 11 AM, roughly coinciding with when U.S. stock markets open — a timing that has rattled traders more than once.
The dead zone is 4 AM, with just 16 posts recorded across 15 months. This is the one hour the internet gets a break.
Midnight tells a different story. With 233 posts, it ranks as the 5th busiest hour of the day — driven largely by a handful of well-documented late-night binges, including one December 2025 session in which he posted 158 times in three hours. The streak that gets written about tends to be the exception rather than the rule, but it is an exception that keeps happening.
His daily average: 17.5 posts. For context, most people send fewer texts.
Data source: Truth Social archive export containing posts from @realDonaldTrump. Archive compiled via the CNN Truth Social data feed (ix.cnn.io). Analysis covers 7,886 posts published between January 20, 2025 (inauguration day) and April 16, 2026. All timestamps converted from UTC to Eastern Time, accounting for EST/EDT seasonal offsets. Includes original posts and re-truths. The December 2025 posting binge figure (158 posts in three hours) was independently reported by Axios on December 2, 2025.
Unsurprising to anyone, he loves to attack people.
Reposts & Links (46.3%) : Nearly half of everything posted is content made by someone else. A significant portion of the president's social media output is hitting the repost button on fan accounts, conservative news sites, and his own previous posts.
Other / Misc (30.4%) : A catch-all for posts that defied easy categorization: congratulating random state legislators, opining on NFL coaching hires, commenting on water flow in California, and declaring various things "GREAT!!!"… for reasons left unexplained.
Attacking Opponents (9.1%) : The most consistent category of original thought. Targets include former presidents, sitting judges, members of his own party, the Pope, television anchors, and on one occasion, a plastic surgeon.
Foreign Policy (8.6%) : Calls with Putin, threats to Iran, letters to foreign leaders, and tariff ultimatums — all announced first on a platform with fewer monthly users than Reddit.
Economy & Finance (3.3%): Mostly GDP numbers he likes, inflation numbers he disputes, and instructions to the Federal Reserve, which is not how the Federal Reserve works.
Tariffs & Trade (2.2%) : Technically separate from Economy & Finance but spiritually the same posts, just angrier and written in more capital letters.
Data source: Same Truth Social archive export (see above). Topic classification performed using keyword matching on post text. Note that post text in the archive is truncated at approximately 130 characters, which limits classification accuracy — posts were assigned to the first matching keyword category, meaning some posts may be miscategorized or assigned to "Other/Misc" due to insufficient text. "Other/Misc" combines posts that were either too short to classify, matched no category keyword, or whose relevant keyword appeared beyond the truncation point. The 46.3% repost figure reflects posts beginning with "RT:" or consisting solely of a URL. Classification methodology and full category definitions available on request.