Trump used deposition over his alleged rape of journalist to boast about his social media app

Former president bragged to lawyers for E Jean Carroll about his ‘hot’ social media platform

Donald Trump used his deposition in a lawsuit brought by a female columnist who claims he raped her in New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the 1990s to brag about the success of his Truth Social platform.

The one-term president boasted about the number of users on his “hot” social media site he set up after being kicked off Twitter and Facebook in the newly unsealed deposition.

Mr Trump was asked by lawyers for E Jean Carroll, whom he described as a “nut job” during the deposition, if he had around 4 million followers on Truth Social.

“I don’t know the number. I know Truth Social is doing very well. I think it was number one ahead of TikTok, number one ahead of Twitter, number one ahead of Instagram and everyone else for the last number of days. I just noticed that. Somebody put it on my desk. They have the ratings, and they said Truth Social is hot,” Mr Trump replied, the record shows.

Mr Trump has denied Ms Carroll’s claims that he attacked her in the dressing room of the luxury Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.

But Mr Trump did not appear to know much about the workings of Truth Social when he was asked specifics about it.

The former president was asked if people were able to “retruth” the posts that he made from his account. “I think so, yes. Yes, they do,” he replied.

He was then asked if people could “like or heart” the posts that he made on the site, and replied, “Could be.”

Ms Carroll alleged in a 2019 memoir that Mr Trump had raped her in either 1995 or 1996 in the dressing room of the store, which is located close to Trump Tower.

In 2019, she sued him for defamation after he notoriously denied her claims by saying she was “not his type”.

After a law was changed to extend the statute limitations to cases of sexual assault, the writer added to her lawsuit an allegation of rape.