Republican former Congressman Devin Nunes of California emerged as one of former President Donald Trump's most vocal defenders in Congress during the House of Representatives' first impeachment inquiry against Trump in 2019.
Nunes relinquished his congressional seat earlier this year to head up the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), the company whose most urgent investment is TRUTH Social, Trump's long-promised social media platform claiming to be a free speech haven for conservatives.
But abdicating his spot in Congress may have been a mistake.
After an error-ridden rollout last month, TRUTH Social has plummeted in new signups, according to a recent report from The Wrap, with only 60,000 users a week.
Stephanie Chan of the analytics firm Sensor Tower told the publication:
“This is down 93% from its launch week, when it saw 872,000 installs during the week of Feb. 21. We estimate that Truth Social has so far reached approximately 1.2 million installs since its launch.”
As The Wrap noted, this is far behind the pace that competing right-wing social media platforms like GETTR and Parler were at this stage of their launch. Trump supporters longing for the days of the former President's onslaught of unhinged tweets are likely to be dismayed that Trump himself hasn't posted on his account since last month.
Now, Nunes' name is trending on Twitter for the amount of people mocking the potentially failed endeavor.
Pretend Twitter never stood a chance. As others have said, it would have been cheaper and less injurious to Devin Nunes' dignity to let Trump type words on an iPad, tell him they were being tweeted out from his "new account," then just turn off the iPad and walk out of the room. https://t.co/6MTL326I5x
— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) March 31, 2022
Photo of Devin Nunes trying to fix the problem at Truth Social...
Obviously he was unaware of the fact that "Everything Trump touches..." pic.twitter.com/eEkZpT4cIu
— J Reed (@EarthlingJR) March 31, 2022
Devin Nunes will be an Uber driver by the end of the year... https://t.co/dp2DieSmab
— ▄▀▄▀▄🅳🅰🅽🆃🅸🅵🅰▄▀▄▀▄ (@geargodd) March 30, 2022
Devin Nunes is going to have one hell of an ugly resume after this last adventure.
— Jeff Mazen 🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@jeffmazen11) March 31, 2022
Anyone who says Truth Social was ineffective is wrong. It got Devin Nunes out of Congress.
— Kate 🤍🇺🇸🌻🇺🇦 (@ImSpeaking13) March 23, 2022
Devin Nunes left Congress to oversee Truth Social, and now it’s imploding.
That makes me so happy.
— Jack Cocchiarella (@JDCocchiarella) March 24, 2022
And, of course, there were jokes about Devin Nunes' cow.
Devin Nunes will never be as popular as his cow.
— John Collins (@Logically_JC) March 31, 2022
People are saying Devin Nunes is 'having a cow' about the Truth Social debacle.
— Don Lewis (@DonLew87) March 31, 2022
Devin Nunes looking for Truth Social pic.twitter.com/GPRB31oYj9
— Asinus Asinum Fricat (@Fricat) March 25, 2022
It remains unclear when, or if, TRUTH Social will bounce back.
@GovPressOffice/X
@_branmaraj/Twitter (