A mysterious social media app appears to be luring people out of $4.99 a week to access the app while claiming that Donald Trump is on the platform.
The ex-president has now hit the company with a cease-and-desist letter. The letter demands that the app stop using President Trump’s likeness.
The app, called 2nd1st, is available on Apple’s app store and bills itself as a place for “uncensored news and chat.”In addition to Trump, the app features profiles for conservative figures like Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Rand Paul, as well as former “The View” host Meghan McCain.
It’s not clear that any of these people actually use the platform.
After a source close to Trump was contacted for this story, attorneys for the ex-president’s team sent the cease-and-desist letter.
2nd1st’s listing on the Apple App Store prominently features a screenshot of a fake post from Trump. It’s actually a copied-and-pasted version of a Jan. 8 tweet in which Trump said — on Twitter, not on 2nd1st — that the people who voted for him “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future.”
The tweet was cited by Twitter in its blog post about why it banned Trump for allegedly inciting violence.
The app also has a profile page for Trump featuring dozens of other posts — even though the ex-president’s spokeswoman Liz Harrington confirmed to The Post that he doesn’t use the platform.
Since Trump was booted from mainstream social media in January, a slate of free speech-oriented platforms have sprouted up in attempts to court the president and his millions of followers.
Gettr, a Twitter alternative run by former Trump adviser Jason Miller, is pushing to get the ex-president to join the platform, including by reportedly offering him equity. Another free speech app, Parler, has also courted Trump.
But while Trump has refused so far to join any other new social media platforms, 2nd1st shows that companies are looking to step into the void of his absence from Facebook and Twitter.
