In the streaming era, incremental news from a tiny upstart with limited content, few bells and whistles, and zero original programming normally wouldn’t command too much attention.
Unless the majority owner of that upstart is President Trump.
Truth+, the little-known, year-old video streaming service started by Trump Media & Technology Group, said last week that it had expanded globally. The announcement helped generate enough buzz to bump up the price of the holding company’s sagging stock, at least for now.
It also provoked a question: What is Truth+, anyway?
It promises ‘non-woke’ news and entertainment.
Trump Media and Technology Group, a publicly traded company, announced plans in late 2021 to introduce a video-on-demand service called TMTG+. The company said the service would focus on “non-woke” entertainment. In press materials, the company cast TMTG+ as a direct competitor to Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu.
Nothing more was said about it until April 2024, when Trump Media’s president and chief executive, the former Republican representative Devin Nunes, said it “had finished the research and development phase of its new live TV streaming platform” and would soon begin rolling it out. “We aim to provide a permanent home for high-quality news and entertainment that face discrimination by other channels and content delivery services,” Mr. Nunes said.
The service, renamed Truth+, formally debuted last August. It was first accessible through the Truth Social website or app, and stand-alone Truth+ apps for Android and iPhone dropped a few months later.
This April, Trump Media said that Truth+ was now compatible with most TV platforms, like Roku or Apple TV, and that its reach had expanded to Mexico and Canada. Last week’s announcement pushed those borders farther, making Truth+ and its programming available worldwide.
The service has raised ethical concerns.
Finding news content on Truth+ that is critical of the Trump administration will not be easy.
The president’s controlling stake in the media company, currently at around 53 percent of all TMTG shares, has no real precedent. The closest analog is President Warren G. Harding, who kept his ownership stake of the Daily Star newspaper of Marion, Ohio, throughout his presidency. But a small town paper in the 1920s is far different from a modern global video platform.
Since it started, the two most prominent channels on Truth+ have been Newsmax and One America News Network, right-leaning outlets with credentialed journalists in the White House press corps covering the Trump administration. The fact that their companies are in business with the president has raised questions about their ability to provide unbiased coverage of his administration.
Last month, Newsmax’s chief executive, Chris Ruddy, said in an interview that Mr. Trump had “done an A+ job” so far. A week later, Mr. Trump reposted a story on Truth Social about Mr. Ruddy’s flattering evaluation.
Newsmax, which airs political coverage that is reliably to the right of Fox News, downplayed any ethical concerns. The company noted that “neither Truth+ or Newsmax get any special deal in terms of revenue or any other benefit,” and that it “is carried on dozens of apps and TV platforms globally.”
In December, Mr. Trump placed his TMTG shares into a trust controlled by his eldest son, but financial experts have noted the trust is neither blind nor independent, as is the custom for politicians facing potential conflicts of interest.
Shannon Devine, a Trump media spokeswoman, dismissed the ethical questions in a statement. “That New York Times reporters would put this ludicrous spin on this story is a sadly predictable outcome for a once-respectable newspaper that has been corrupted, debased, and perverted by its own political bias,” the statement said.
Trump Media does not create the content.
Unlike Netflix, Amazon Prime and other streaming giants, Trump Media doesn’t produce any original content. Everything on the platform is programming that can be found elsewhere and often for free.
Truth+ has 27 free livestreaming channels. That menu includes right-leaning news outlets like Real America’s Voice, Lindell TV and the Right Side Broadcasting Network; nonpolitical brands including WeatherNation Channel and Outdoor Channel; and a variety of religious offerings like the Word Network.
On Thursday, Trump Media announced a subscription tier on Truth+ called the Patriot Package. For $9.99 a month, the same price as Hulu, subscribers get 12 additional channels, including the primary news feeds of Newsmax and One America News Network.
In addition, the service has a library of movies, documentaries and TV series. According to the app, the most watched among them presently includes a low-budget profile of Elon Musk; and an hourlong documentary, “Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space,” that considers the question of whether “lizardlike aliens” live among us today.
The audience is small.
Truth+ hasn’t disclosed how many people are using the service, paid or free, though the number is probably a tiny fraction of the roughly 125 million people who pay for Disney+.
But unlike many other niche streamers, said Jason Damata, the founder and chief executive of the media consultancy Fabric Media, Truth+ has a sharply defined audience: avid supporters of Mr. Trump. The hope for Truth+ is that at least some of them will choose to pay for the service as a show of loyalty to the president — what Mr. Damata called the “cultural benefit” of being a part of a community that actively supports Mr. Trump’s movement.
To that point, paying the $10-a-month fee does confer at least one benefit that’s impossible to buy elsewhere: according to the company, paying subscribers receive automatic verification status on Truth Social, represented by a red check mark next to their profiles — something normally reserved for “well known, highly searchable notable accounts” such as those belonging to celebrities, athletes, government officials and journalists.
The check mark is part of what Mr. Damata described as a bundling strategy that includes access to Newsmax. The channel, which was once available for free through its app, has been behind a paywall since late 2023 and costs $4.99 a month. By paying for Truth+, they are getting both at once.
The service has struggled to generate revenue.
A year ago, Trump Media told investors that it would spend $17.5 million to license the technology it needs to run Truth+. In its most recent quarterly report, which covered the period through March, the company said Truth+ didn’t generate any advertising revenue.
That trend line, big costs against minimal ad sales, is a familiar one for Trump Media, which has never reported a profit. In the first quarter, it lost $31.7 million and had $821,200 in revenue, all from ad sales on Truth Social. In search of more fruitful sources of income, the company expanded into payment processing earlier this year. It has also been looking into marketing crypto-related securities and more recently has raised $2.5 billion to invest in Bitcoin.
Ken Bensinger covers media and politics for The Times.
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