Former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform has hemorrhaged users in record numbers for the third straight month, and according to a leading analyst of right-wing media, this may spell “trouble at the ballot box” for the GOP presidential nominee.

“The diminishing audience levels for Truth Social suggest a rejection of the harsh rhetoric expressed by the ex-president and his political allies that is one of the hallmarks of the two-year-old platform,” Howard Polskin told The Guardian.

“If this softness persists, it might portend trouble for Mr Trump at the ballot box in November.”

It’s safe to assume that Polskin knows what he’s talking about. He’s the president of TheRighting, a site that aims to “inform middle-of-the-road and liberal audiences about stories and viewpoints not on their radar that are shaping political opinion across a wide swath of America.”

For those of us who know how evil Trump is, this is good news. I hope Truth Social, which he launched in February 2022 after being kicked off X (then Twitter) for inciting the deadly attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, continues to drop like a boulder.

Trump has unfortunately regained access to major platforms but he’s been sticking to using Truth Social as the usual place to spout off his numerous repeated lies regarding election fraud, his criminal conviction in New York, and the ongoing criminal cases he still faces. Oh, and the multi-million-dollar fines he still faces in several civil cases.

But this has definitely been an up-and-down situation for Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology as share prices fluctuate wildly. During its first month online, Truth Social had 3.26 million unique users, TheRighting reports. But as of this June, the site had just over 2.11 million unique users, a drop of 38 percent year by year.

TheRighting did a side-by-side comparison between Truth Social and other right-wing platforms. Apparently, there’s been plenty of bad news to go around for these sites. Rumble had 6.37 million unique users in June 2024, a drop of 43 percent year on year, while Gettr had 134,000, down 34 percent. The news was equally glum for right-wing media sites. When comparing unique visitor figures from June 2020 and June 2024, the site found that Fox News was down 26 percent, plunging from 107.3 million to 79.6 million.

As Polskin notes:

“The ongoing audience erosion in June 2024 was expected because June 2020 was dominated by big news events like the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd [by police in Minneapolis] and the global health crisis triggered by the spread of Covid-19.”

Audiences didn’t drop quite as much during June 2023 and June 2024, TheRighting reports, adding that figures for mainstream and liberal sites followed similar patterns.

But there may be changes ahead for Truth Social and similar sites, especially since July brought a plethora of huge news events. The failed attempt on Trump’s life, the raucous Republican convention, Joe Biden’s decision to end his run for president, and the rise of his Vice President Kamala Harris could well bring about big changes.

Events like these “should provide a much-needed boost to the traffic for news outlets on both sides of the aisle,” Polskin says. “However, if traffic continues to drop, it would signal intensifying challenges facing all news websites.”

If Trump continues his inflammatory rhetoric there’s a good chance he may alienate more moderate users on his platform. This is a man who, under most circumstances, needs a muzzle but hopefully, he’ll continue to get himself in trouble because if there’s one thing I know it’s this

He never, ever learns. Ever.