Former President Donald Trump is back on Instagram for the first time since the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
His comeback post: pushing a second wave of his Trump Digital Trading Cards non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. The first series of Trump NFTs was released last December, almost 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 almost $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 from his digital trading card sales.
Now a second 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 on Tuesday afternoon. “Have fun!”
The promo 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 a superhero-style cape. It was shared with a caption noting that the price of the trading cards is the same ($99) as the initial series, even though the cards have spiked in value since they were first released. For example, the Trump NFTs rallied up 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 that Trump posted anything from his Instagram account was Jan. 5, 2021, when he invited followers to come to the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. for Trump’s “Save America March.” The following day, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol complex while Congress was meeting to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Trump has been accused of inciting the violence at the Capitol that day, including by a bipartisan House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack. Two days later, Trump was blocked from the Meta-owned META, -0.44% Facebook and Instagram platforms, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying at the time that, “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.” Twitter also suspended him for a couple of years, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” but new Twitter CEO Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account last fall.
Earlier this year, however, Meta said that Trump would be given access to his accounts again following the over two-year suspension. But while Trump regained control of the accounts in February, he hadn’t posted on there — until now. Trump has largely been posting on his Truth Social platform, instead; a Twitter rival created by Trump Media & Technology Group. But now that he’s ramping up his 2024 bid, he’s becoming more present on other platforms, although he has yet to tweet.
Trump previously returned to Facebook on March 17 with a post stating “I’M BACK” in all caps, and he’s been posting on Facebook pretty regularly ever since — including duplicates of his new digital trading cards announcement.
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