Truth Social in Trump’s New York Civil Fraud Case

This study examines how US President Donald Trump uses Truth Social as a strategic tool of power politics to spread his populist rhetoric during his New York civil fraud case. Drawing on van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach to Critical Discourse Analysis and Mudde’s (2004, 2007) conceptualization of populism, we analyze 218 posts from Trump’s personal account (September 2022-February 2024) to examine how his discourse constructs ideological divides and reinforces his political narrative. The findings reveal that Trump systematically employs positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation to contrast himself and his supporters—the ‘authentic people’—against ‘corrupt elites,’ framing his legal troubles as emblematic of systemic persecution. His rhetoric is further characterized by strategic victimhood, in which he casts himself as the target of political persecution, aligning personal grievances with his followers’ collective identity. Additionally, Trump’s frequent use of derogatory labels functions linguistically to delegitimize opponents and intensify his ‘us vs. them’ framing. By integrating CDA with populism theory, this study contributes to scholarship on political communication by demonstrating how platform-specific discourse fuses personal and collective victimhood to mobilize support, reshape followers’ mental models of political conflict, and heighten ideological polarization.