Trump With No Guard Rails: ‘civilization Will Die’ Post Shows His Growing Power Over Social Media

President Donald Trump's warning that “a whole civilization will die” is the starkest example yet of his use of his personal online platform to threaten his enemies — unencumbered by the social media restrictions that once hampered him.

Unlike six years ago, when Trump’s posts about shooting looters in Minnesota, the 2020 election or Covid-19 misinformation drew penalties from Twitter and Facebook, the president faced no repercussions Tuesday for his newest Truth Social post threatening reprisals against Iran. Meanwhile, the dominant social media networks — including X, owned by his sometime-ally Elon Musk — are showing no appetite for reining in Trump’s rhetoric during his second term, though he’s been far less active there lately.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment, and X did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

In Truth Social, a service he launched more than a year after his first term ended, Trump has a megaphone for putting out whatever message he chooses, then to be picked up by media across the world.

And because Trump sets the rules, he knows his content will stay up no matter what rules any other platforms might choose to enforce, said Katie Harbath, a tech consultant and former longtime public policy director at Facebook’s parent Meta.

“From a strategic standpoint, it gives him the most leverage for getting his messages out without having to worry about whether or not others who control other platforms are going to allow him the reach that he wants to have,” Harbath said.

Regarding Tuesday’s Iran post, she added: “If this had happened in his first term, I think people would have been a lot more worked up over whether or not a post like this should or should not stay up.”

Truth Social has a relatively tiny user base — an estimated 6.3 million active users as of a year ago, compared with 3 billion monthly users on Facebook — and drew tepid reviews after its launch, including some private gripes from Trump himself, according to past POLITICO reporting. But it offers his supporters, and the media, an unfiltered glimpse at Trump’s thinking.

“President Trump is the most accessible and transparent President in history, and the entire world appreciates having a direct line into his thought process,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “In this case, President Trump has been clear about what will happen if Iran fails to make a deal, which would prompt a response unlike anything the regime has witnessed before.”

For Trump, it’s also a hedge against the danger that the currently cowed Silicon Valley giants will resume their past efforts to limit the president’s speech.

During Trump’s first term, social media companies at least maintained a pretense of principled content moderation, said Nu Wexler, a tech consultant and former staffer at Facebook, Twitter and Google. Now, the political costs are too high after facing fierce blowback for accusations of censoring Republican viewpoints, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Companies didn't change their content policies to promote free expression,” Wexler told POLITICO. “It was because the political cost of enforcing them against President Trump became too high. The moderation frameworks that took years to build were always contingent on the political threat landscape, and it shifted dramatically in 2024.”

Tech companies have long struggled to draw red lines for global leaders and how content moderation rules apply to them.

Trump, an avid Twitter user during his first term,threatened North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with nuclear warfare in a 2018 tweet — writing that “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Though the post directly violated Twitter’s policy on violent threats at the time, the company refused to ban Trump from the platform, citing the “newsworthiness” and “public interest” value of his posts.

But the platforms eventually became more aggressive.

In May 2020, amid the anti-police brutality protests following the death of George Floyd, Twitter accused Trump of “glorifying violence” for a tweet in which he warned that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Twitter’s violence warning label, and other decisions by Twitter and Facebook to label, take down or limit the spread of some of his messages, provoked a furious response from Trump, who issued a sprawling executive order aimed at punishing social media companies that censor political messages. Trump also pressured Congress — unsuccessfully — to repeal crucial legal liability protections for online companies, a crusade that continued even after he lost the 2020 election.

Trump has had much closer relations with the tech industry’s titans in his second term, which has seen none of this kind of drama between the White House and the big social media companies.

Still, Truth Social remains as a backstop in case he needs it.

The president’s social media platform is doing exactly what Trump wanted it to do in terms of getting his message out to the public, said Crystal Patterson, CEO and president of the public relations firm Washington Media Group, who used to head global civic partnerships at Facebook.

“But I also think if he hadn't done this, he still wouldn't be having any problem getting people to pay attention to what he's focused on,” Patterson said.