A collection of videos from US president-elect Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign have shot to popularity on the social media platform X, gaining millions of views since the 78-year-old’s victory over Kamala Harris last week.
The videos were released last year, however they are now only gaining traction with millions of people, the majority of whom have never laid eyes on them before, including Trump voters.
The reason that very few people seem to have seen the videos of Trump outlining a number of policies, from immigration to free speech, is because of Mr Trump being banned from Twitter in 2021, before the platform was bought by tech tycoon, Elon Musk. Mr Trump had been banned due to the risk of ‘incitement to violence.’
Mr Trump was banned from using Twitter in January 2021, with his account finally reinstated after Elon Musk ran a poll in which users narrowly backed the move to bring the former US president back to the platform.
“The people have spoken,” Mr Musk tweeted in November 2022, saying that 51.8 per cent of more than 15 million Twitter users voted for the ban to be lifted.
However, Mr Trump decided not to return to the platform straight away, previously saying, “I don’t see any reason for it.”
The campaign videos, which were posted to Truth Social, outline a number of key policies, including a plan outlining Trump’s vision to “shatter left-wing censorship.”
FREE SPEECH AND CENSORSHIP
“If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country,” Mr Trump says. “It’s as simple as that. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple. Just like dominoes, they’ll go down one by one.
“That’s why today I’m announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime, and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans. And reclaim is a very important word in this case – because they’ve taken it away.”
He continues: “In recent weeks, bombshell reports have confirmed that a sinister group of deep-state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists and depraved corporate news media have been conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people.
“They have collaborated to suppress vital information on everything, from elections to public health. The censorship cartel must be dismantled and destroyed, and it must happen immediately.”
Going on to outline his plan, Mr Trump states: “Firstly, within hours of my inauguration, I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organisation, business, or person to censor, limit, categorise or impede the lawful speech of American citizens.
“I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis or disinformation. And I will begin the process of identifying and firing any federal bureaucrat who has engaged in domestic censorship directly or indirectly. Whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health, Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ – no matter who they are.”
“Second, I will order the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime, which is absolutely destructive and terrible. And to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified. These include possible violations of federal civil rights law, campaign finance laws, federal elections laws, security laws and antitrust laws, the Hatch Act, and a host of other potential criminal, civil, regulatory, and constitutuonal offences.”
“To assist in these efforts, I am urging House Republicans to immediately send reservation letters, and we have to do this right now, to the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and every Silicon Valley tech giant, ordering them not to destroy evidence of censorship.”
Thirdly, Mr Trump says that following his inauguration as President, he will ask Congress to “send a Bill to my desk revising Section 230, to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”
“From now on,” he says, “Digital platforms should only qualify for immunity protection under Section 230 – if they meet high standards of neutrality, transparency, fairness, and non-discrimination.”
“We should require these platforms to increase their efforts to take down unlawful content such as child exploitation and promoting terrorism while dramatically curtailing their power to arbitrarily restrict lawful speech.”
Trump says that in relation to free speech, his fourth priority is to “break up the entire toxic censorship industry that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called mis and disinformation.”
He states that the federal government should “immediately” stop funding all non-profits and academic programmes that support “authoritarian projects.”
“If any US university is discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past – such as flagging social media content for removal of blacklisting – those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years and maybe more.”
In the video, Mr Trump also calls for new laws setting out clear criminal penalties for “federal bureaucrats who partner with private entities to do an end-run around the Constitution, and deprive Americans of their fourth and fifth amendment rights – in other words, deprive them of their vote.”
TRANS ISSUES
In a second now-uncovered video, Mr Trump vows to stop trans surgeries for minors.
In what he describes as his plan to stop the “chemical, physical and emotional mutilation of our youth,” Mr Trump says that on “day one” of his presidency, he will revoke Joe Biden’s “cruel policies on so-called gender affirming care.”
He says in the 2023 video: “Ridiculous. A process that includes giving kids puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance, and ultimately performing surgery on minor children. Can you believe this?”
The former president pledges to sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programmes that “promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
“I will then ask Congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures, and to pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all fifty states.
“It will go very quickly. I will declare that any hospital or healthcare provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare, and will be terminated from the programme immediately.”
“Furthermore, I will support the creation of a private right of action for victims to sue doctors who have unforgivably performed these procedures on minor children.”
He further says that the Department of Justice will investigate “big pharma” and the “big hospital networks” to determine “whether they have deliberately covered up horrific, long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich at the expense of vulnerable patients.”
“We will also investigate whether big pharma and others have illegally marketed puberty blockers, which are in no way licensed or approved for this use.”
On education, Mr Trump promises that under a Trump administration, the Department of Education will inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child “that they could be trapped in the wrong body,” they will be “faced with severe consequences” – including potential civil rights violations for sex discrimination and the elimination of federal funding.”
“We will promote positive education about the nuclear family,” he adds. “The roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique.”
“I will ask Congress to pass a Bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth. The Bill will also make clear that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women’s sports, and we will protect the rights of parents from being forced to allow their minor child to assume a gender which is new, and an identity without the parents consent.
“The identity will not be new, and it will not be without parental consent. No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender – a concept that was never heard of in all of human history. Nobody’s ever heard of this. What’s happening today? It was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago. Under my leadership, this madness will end.”
LAW AND ORDER
In another video which has climbed to internet virality in the last few days, Mr Trump pledges to restore “law and order” in the US.
In the footage, he claims that the Biden administration had turned “our once great cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”
“There’s never been anything like it,” he says. His plan includes signing a record investment in hiring, retention and training for police officers nationwide, as well as increasing liability protections for officers “because the Democrats want to take those protections away from our police.”
“We want them to do their jobs right,” he said. “You can’t take their protections away.”
He also encourages “proven common sense policing measures” including stop and frisk, strictly enforcing “proven gun laws against convicted felons” and “cracking down on the open use of illegal drugs.”
Mr Trump only began using X on a regular basis again in August 2024 following an interview with Elon Musk. The last time he used the site prior to that was in August 2023. Prior to a post on 24 August 2023, the last time the president elect used the site was on 8 January 2021.
Mr Trump had instead opted to run his campaign on Truth Social, an alternative social media company in which he owns a 58.9 per cent stake. Following the election, Mr Trump’s fortune is set to jump by $1.4bn after the value of his technology company soared following his win.
The value of the platform, set up after Mr Trump was removed from Twitter in 2021, had fluctuated hugely as opinion polls shifted prior to Tuesday’s vote.
Wednesday’s pre-market stock surge values the company at more than $9bn. Meanwhile, shares have also been boosted by speculation that Mr Musk’s X might buy the company. A report in the New York Post says that people inside Mr Trump’s camp will at some point take over Truth Social, or merge it with X.