In what’s proving to be a more powerful love story than Romeo and Juliet (don’t quote me, I never read it), the bromance between Donald Trump appears to be going strong, with the former’s social media platform reading like something of a love letter in recent days.
For context, Musk made his for Trump official over the weekend with a public endorsement on X following the shooting at the former president’s rally in Pennsylvania. It is also revealed that the billionaire had donated a sizable amount to a Trump Super PAC in of his re-election come November.
Now, it appears X, the social media platform once known as Twitter (RIP) and owned by Musk, is aligning with Musk’s . This week, s have noticed a flurry of changes to their X feeds, namely the appearance of custom icons alongside pro-Trump hashtags. If you were to use the #MAGA, for example, a small photo of Trump raising his fist (you know the one) automatically appears next to the post.
Elsewhere, American flags appear when the #Trump2024 hashtag is used, and even more American flags begin raining down the screen when navigating that particular hashtag page. This is notable because it marks a first for the social media platform. While it has employed similar features for Apple promotions and bipartisan events like Election Day, X has never shown emoji-fuelled for an individual candidate.
President Joe Biden is enjoying no such features, and it’s hard not to think of the raining Trump’s on X as an example of Musk’s favoritism, especially considering his recent endorsement. s have flocked to X — probably with umbrellas to avoid the Trump rainstorm — to express their thoughts, with some labelling the pro-Trump features as “tacky” and describing Musk as a “pathetic groveling sellout.”
It’s worth noting that X has since confirmed that the pro-Trump features were part of a paid promotion by the Trump campaign (a campaign which Musk just donated to, anyway). While their any good romcom), all of it seems to point to a billionaire and former president love story (fine, I’ll watch it).
It doesn’t help matters that in 2023, a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight found that X and other social platforms had bent and broken their rules to favor Trump followers. That hearing was initially launched to investigate instances in which X had ed Biden, but it ended up finding the opposite.
Not even Nora Ephron or Richard Curtis could craft this kind of love story.
Published: Jul 19, 2024 04:42 am