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Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, starts with rocky launch

Users of the Twitter-like app reported they were unable to sign up for accounts shortly after its launch Monday.

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump's latest foray into the world of social media appears to be having a rocky rollout. 

Trump's long-teased social media platform, Truth Social, rolled out on the App store Monday, Presidents Day. It claims to be different from other social media platforms because it is "free from political discrimination." 

But the app appears to be having some issues on launch day. Many users are reporting that they are unable to get through the sign-up process to make an account. 

When attempted, the sign-up process worked until asking for a phone number to text a 6-digit verification code to. That code never came, and the "resend code" button on the page didn't appear to function.  

Credit: Chris McCrory/TEGNA
When attempted, the sign-up process couldn't be continued past the 6-digit verification step, because the text with the code never came.

It's unclear what's causing the issues. 

The service is owned by Trump Media and Technology Group, a new enterprise Trump started after leaving the White House.

Former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, who quit Congress to become CEO of the new company last year, told Trump's former deputy national security advisor Sebastian Gorka in an interview on Gorka's podcast that Truth Social would be "fully operational" by the end of March. 

Images of the platform on the App store show a Twitter-like design, reminiscent of Trump's former favorite social platform. In another mirror of Twitter, posts on the platform are called "truths" which can be "retruthed," in a play on Twitter's "tweet" and "retweet" functions for posting and sharing content. 

Truth Social is the former president's attempt to raise his social media profile after popular networks such as Twitter and Facebook banned his accounts in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. 

All major social media platforms banned Trump for inciting violence towards lawmakers after Trump tweeted a video that expressed sympathy for the rioters at the Capitol during the attack. 

The app's launch comes as Trump faces additional scrutiny.  

The National Archives on Friday confirmed that some of the material found in boxes the former president took to his Florida home after leaving the White House had been marked as classified. 

A federal judge ruled the same day that several civil lawsuits seeking to hold Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 attack could move forward in court. The 112-page ruling indicated the former president could be legally responsible for inciting the attack.

And a day earlier, a New York judge ruled that Trump and two of his children must comply with subpoenas for their testimony under oath in a civil investigation into the Trump organization. 

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