On Friday morning, as part of a very thorough tweetstorm about Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into his administration, President Donald Trump took time out to praise himself for his social media presence.
The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media – over 100 million people! I can go around them
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2017
That number didn’t come out of nowhere. While people immediately pointed to his 32 million followers on Twitter as proof it was false, the 100 million number is something the White House has been trying to push for some time.
A Breitbart writer floated that number after a “tech source” gave it to him two weeks ago.
White House tech source estimates that Trump has 108-110 million social media followers
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) June 6, 2017
Is it accurate, though? Well… kind of, if you add it all up. The president has access to more social media accounts than just his famous @realDonaldTrump account. Here are the numbers relating to President Trump’s online presence.
@realDonaldTrump: 32.4 m
@POTUS: 18.8 million
@WhiteHouse: 14.6 million
Donald J. Trump: 22.4 million
President Donald J. Trump: 1.7 million
The White House: 8.3 million
@realdonaldtrump: 7 million
@whitehouse: 3.6 million
All told, that adds up to 108.8 million followers, or the number the Breitbart writer tossed out there. Of course, that doesn’t account for overlap, of which there is likely a significant amount. A great number of people likely follow @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. Or follow him on Instagram and Twitter. Neither does that number factor in fake followers. As much as half of the @realDonaldTrump followers are fake, according to some estimates.
So, the true number is likely far lower than 108 million. But that figure is also not entirely wrong.
