Sundown, you’d better take care
By 
Paul has been on this beat recently, but it’s good to see Trump’s increasingly far from hinged late night Truth Social posts get some sustained and systematic attention from major reporters:
After the sun went down, another familiar ritual began: late-night social-media posting. The president’s Truth Social account posted 55 messages between 10:14 p.m. and 1:12 a.m.
The messages, mostly reposts from other accounts, falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen, aired frustrations from anonymous social-media users that Democrats hadn’t been indicted by the Justice Department and called for the arrest of former President Barack Obama.
The activity is emblematic of Trump’s account, which operates as a nearly round-the-clock, high-volume amplification system that blends his own voice with a network of partisan and fringe content. Since the start of his second term, Trump’s Truth Social account has ballooned to 12.6 million followers, up from about 8.6 million. Trump—with the help of staff—has posted at least 8,800 times, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
Monday was one of 44 similar spates of a dozen or more Truth Social posts published from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. since Trump returned to the White House. On Dec. 1, from 8:17 p.m. until just before midnight, the president’s account posted nearly 160 times—more posts than on any other day in his second term.
The bursts of social-media activity feature content from other accounts—including images, videos and text—that appeal to the president and his team. The nighttime missives often include some of the president’s sharpest and most divisive messaging, amplifying conspiracy theories, describing migrants as a threat to the country, threatening to punish his adversaries and mocking his opponents—all while giving a platform to obscure, anonymous accounts.
The account’s most active nights have been driven by posts featuring videos and screengrabs from users on X and other social-media platforms. For example, in the early-morning hours of Jan. 5, days after a successful military operation in Venezuela, Trump’s account posted nearly 90 times in the span of an hour.
The posts included a video clip of Trump saying that Somalia isn’t a nation, “it’s just people walking around killing each other.” Since January 2025, the account has published more than 120 posts critical of the country or its people, including posts disparaging Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a prominent member of Minnesota’s Somali community.
The posts leave the public with a stew of presidential musings and reposts, many of which are published while Americans are asleep. Most of the messages get little scrutiny, disappearing into the cascade of posts on his account.
The president spending his overnights engaging in various forms of racism and authoritarianism while engaging with the likes of Cat Turd Two is not immaterial to his second term being a rolling catastrophe.