Gov. Newsom joins Trump's Truth Social to call out 'Republican lies'

SACRAMENTO -- California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced he has joined former President Donald Trump's Truth Social with the aim of "calling out Republican lies."

Newsom posted about joining the Republican-focused social media on his Twitter account, sharing a video he said he'd posted to Truth Social a day earlier asking questions about the high homicide rate in many red states.

"Going to be on there calling out Republican lies. This could get…interesting," the text from Newsom's post read.  

"I know we're all on this platform in search for the 'truth,' but the truth is, I've not been able to find a simple explanation for the fact that we have a red state murder problem," the governor said in the video before going on to detail that eight of the ten states in the U.S. with the highest murder rates are red states.

"What are the laws and policies in those states that are leading to such carnage?" Newsom asked to end the clip.

The post was met with a good deal of criticism, some of it laced with profanity, on the Truth Social site, with many users advising Newsom to focus on the problems in California.

Trump has described Truth Social as an alternative to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, all of which banned him following the assault on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021. 

While the platform has seen an uptick in users downloading the app since the start of the Jan. 6tth hearings -- the former president has unleashed a number of tirades protesting the hearings -- Truth Social has been plagued with problems since it launched in February.

In addition to slow user growth, the site has faced a number of technical glitches and outages. Trump himself did not post on the platform until weeks after it launched.  

In:
• Gavin Newsom
• Donald Trump
• Politics