CNN
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Elon Musk once bragged that his social network X “is by far the most interesting place on the Internets.” The company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino said “if it’s happening in the world — it’s happening on X.”
More recently, the slogan “it’s all happening at X” has been commandeered by critics of the platform who say X is full of racist rhetoric, disinformation and other objectionable material.
But for anyone who wants to know what’s happening with President Trump’s return to power, it’s true – it’s all happening on X.
The performative aspects of the Trump administration’s blitzkrieg lend themselves perfectly to X. Trump appointees are announcing new policies in line with the president’s executive orders; agencies are promoting the changes; and aides are connecting the new policies to Trump’s campaign promises, one viral post at a time.
This approach starts from the top, specifically with Musk, who is a special government employee given near-total authority to make the Department of Government Efficiency a reality.
Musk tweets incessantly, sometimes more than one hundred times a day, almost always in service of his anti-bureaucracy campaign. By the time fact-checkers point out the faulty premises of some Musk posts, he’s on to the next subject.
His DOGE initiative has made a point of posting daily updates about agencies terminating multi-million-dollar contracts and removing “gender identity” content from websites.
A wide array of critics have called for more transparency into DOGE’s actions, since Musk’s acolytes seem to be cherry-picking the cancelled contracts they choose to publicize.
Trump’s political appointees have been following Musk and DOGE’s lead. To apply the language of Hollywood, Trump picked performers from “central casting” and told them to make sure everyone sees their show. Under Musk, X has become an increasingly right-wing platform, so it makes sense that the Trump administration’s show is happening there.
Homeland Security officials post photos of immigration raids. State Department officials post TikTok-style vertical videos of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s travels. Transportation officials post confirmation that pilot charts will start to reference “Gulf of America” instead of the Gulf of Mexico.
Posting comes naturally to some members of Trump’s cabinet, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who routinely promoted his Fox News shows on social media for years. Now he posts video clips of his meetings and, on Tuesday, candid shots of his workout with Green Berets in Germany.
Sometimes the posts seem intended specifically to impress the president, who maintains an active account on his social network, Truth Social, but is still believed to scroll through X regularly.
Trump’s Truth Social account often features screen grabs of pro-Trump tweets that came from X. And copies of Trump’s messages routinely garner more “likes” and reposts on X than they do on Truth Social.
Trump’s media company helped build Truth Social after he was banned from X (then known as Twitter), following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump sued the company, and Musk reinstated him in 2022. X this week agreed to pay to settle Trump’s lawsuit.
Musk’s platform is also a place for anonymous, purportedly pro-MAGA accounts to cheer for the actions of Trump’s cabinet, no matter how small.
When Veteran’s Affairs secretary Doug Collins announced that his team “ran across a $178,000 contract VA had with Politico and we promptly canceled it,” hundreds of users replied to thank him. The VA had a budget of more than $300 billion last year.
Vice President JD Vance is an active X user; he recently triggered days of news coverage by questioning the authority of the judicial branch to challenge Trump’s power.
Other Trump loyalists have happily undermined the legislative branch. Trump’s pick for acting administrator of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, wrote on X that his agency had stopped paying for housing for migrants. Congress appropriated money for the housing program. But Hamilton opined that Congress “should have never passed bills in 2023 and 2024 asking FEMA to do this work. This stops now.”
Viewed all at once, the Trump administration’s high-profile presence on X is both a projection of power and a nonstop promotional reel for the president.
CNN reported last month that some federal agents assisting with immigration sweeps were told to be camera-ready.
And the Wall Street Journal reported this week that acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove “personally called FBI supervisors in several cities to make sure they were enforcing Trump’s immigration agenda and posting pictures of their work on social media.”
Enforcing the agenda isn’t sufficient; posting the pictures on social media is also part of the assignment.
It’s all happening on X, indeed.
