Former President Donald Trump is back on Instagram for the first time since the riot on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol.
His comeback post: pushing a new wave of Trump Digital Trading Cards non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. The first series of Trump NFTs were released last December, nearly a month after he launched his 2024 presidential campaign, for $99 apiece. All 44,000 sold out in less than a day, and appeared to generate nearly $4.4 million in total revenue — although, as Forbes reported, Trump’s financial disclosure…
Former President Donald Trump is back on Instagram for the first time since the riot on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol.
His comeback post: pushing a new wave of Trump Digital Trading Cards non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. The first series of Trump NFTs were released last December, nearly a month after he launched his 2024 presidential campaign, for $99 apiece. All 44,000 sold out in less than a day, and appeared to generate nearly $4.4 million in total revenue — although, as Forbes reported, Trump’s financial disclosure forms show he personally pocketed between $100,000 and $1 million dollars from the sale of digital trading cards.
Now a new batch is being made available, once again for $99 each.
“I am pleased to inform you that due to the great success of my previously launched DIGITAL TRADING CARDS, we are doing it again, SERIES 2, AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW.” reads the post shared on the @realdonaldtrump page Tuesday afternoon. “Have fun!”
The campaign was paired with a photo illustration of Trump holding the Liberty Bell, along with a transparent American flag behind him.
This was followed with another post about an hour later, this one featuring the former POTUS posed as a wrestler, complete with a gold championship belt and superhero-style cape. It was shared with a caption noting that the price of the trading cards is the same ($99) as the first series, although the cards have increased in value since they were first released. For example, Trump NFTs increased over 20% on the day he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury.
Within a couple of hours on Tuesday, the first post had already drawn more than 623,000 likes and counting.
This is notable because the last time Trump posted anything from his Instagram account was on January 5, 2021, when he invited followers to come to the Ellipse in Washington, DC for Trump’s “Save America March.” The next day, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol complex as Congress met to confirm Joe Biden’s election victory.
Trump has been accused of inciting the violence at the Capitol that day, including by a bipartisan select committee investigating the attack on January 6, 2021. Two days later, Trump was blocked from Meta-owned
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Facebook and Instagram platforms, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying at the time that “We believe the risk of allowing the president to continue using our service during this period is simply too great.” Twitter also suspended him for a couple of years, “due to the risk of further incitement to violence,” but new Twitter CEO Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account last fall.
Earlier this year, however, Meta said Trump would regain access to his accounts after the more than two-year suspension. But while Trump regained control of the accounts in February, he hadn’t posted there — until now. Trump has mostly posted on his Truth Social platform, instead; a Twitter rival created by the Trump Media & Technology Group. But now that he’s ramping up his bid for 2024, he’s becoming more present on other platforms, even if he hasn’t tweeted yet.
Trump previously returned to Facebook on March 17 with a post that said “I’M BACK” in all caps, and he’s been posting on Facebook fairly regularly since — including duplicates of his announcement of new digital trading cards.
