The highly anticipated presidential hopefuls making their pitch on Threads
While the frontrunners in the 2024 presidential race have yet to appear on Threads, the new Instagram app that aims to rival Twitter, many of the highly anticipated candidates quickly took advantage of the platform’s burgeoning audience.
“Strap your seat belt and join Threads!” South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott wrote in a caption to a selfie of himself and others in a car he posted Thursday — by that morning the app had already been downloaded more than 30 million times, putting him on track to be the fastest downloaded app ever.
But President Biden, former President Donald J. Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis remain absent from the platform so far.
And that might be fine with Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, telling The Times’ Hard Fork podcast on Thursday that he doesn’t expect Threads to become a destination for news or politics, arenas where Twitter has dominated public discourse.
“I don’t want to lean on hard news at all. I don’t think we can or should do much to discourage it on Instagram or in Threads, but I don’t think we will do anything to encourage it,” Mr Mosseri said.
The app, released on Wednesday, was presented as an alternative to Twitter, which disillusioned many users after it was bought by Elon Musk in October.
Twitter lawyers threatened legal action against Meta, the company that owns Instagram, Facebook and Threads, accusing it of using trade secrets of former Twitter employees to build the new platform. Mr Musk tweeted Thursday“Competition is fine, cheating is not.”
Mr Trump has also not been active on Twitter lately, despite Mr Musk lifting the ban on Mr Trump’s account following the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. The former president has instead focused on Truth Social, the right-wing social network he launched in 2021.
But many of the GOP candidates have started making their pitches on Threads.
Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and former governor of South Carolina, made a video compilation of her campaign events as her first post on the app. “Strong and proud. Not weak and awake,” she wrote on Thursday. “That’s the America I see.”
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum posted footage of his July 4 campaign appearances in New Hampshire, alongside a post on Wednesday saying he and his wife “look forward to continuing our time here.”
And Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman, gave a pitch to viewers on Wednesday to raise money.
“Welcome to Threads,” he said in a video posted to the app. “I look forward to continuing the conversation here with you about the issues, my candidacy, where I will be and all that our campaign has to offer.”
Francis Suarez, the Republican mayor of Miami, and Larry Elder, a conservative radio host, also shared their campaign pitch on the platform, as did two candidates running in the Democratic primary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading vaccine skeptic, and Marianne Williamson , a self-help author. Even Cornel West, a professor and progressive activist who is running for a third party, has posted.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur, have also set up accounts but have yet to post.
Among the holdouts: former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, both Republicans.
The White House has not said whether Mr Biden will join Threads. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Thursday that the administration “would keep you all updated when we do.”