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The Department of Government Efficiency created its own account on X last November, amassing 4 million followers with a stream of news on contract cancellations and other cuts to the bureaucracy. Elon Musk has posted relentlessly on the social media platform he owns, promoting his own voice on an algorithm he controls.
The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, started a rapid response account in January with about 121,000 followers, a fraction of DOGE’s reach. And Democrats held traditional rallies outside the USAID and Treasury buildings, where Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was mocked on late-night TV and by even some within his own party after leading a chant of “We will win!”
In the online war, said Chi Ossé, a Democratic New York City councilman who has built an online following through his short-form, explanatory videos, you “don’t see those folks anywhere.”
“Trump and Republicans have been able to grasp different types of media in how to get their message across that impacts society as a whole, and I do believe that Dem leadership is missing the mark, not only in the election but in our resistance 2.0,” Ossé said. “We need to be active in every medium.”
Instead, in the early days of Trump’s second term, they’re getting swamped. The rapid response account the DNC started in January is a fifth of the size of @RapidResponse47, the Trump White House’s account. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has almost a million followers. But Musk, who has posted hundreds of times over the last month, has more than 217 million followers. Some Democratic groups, like MoveOn.Org and Human Rights Campaign, are posting far less on X — if not leaving the site completely for Bluesky, a left-leaning version of X with far fewer users and nowhere the same audience reach.
Conservative personalities hold five of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify, while for liberals, only the New York Times’ columnist Ezra Klein cracks that list. When Ben Shapiro, the controversial conservative podcaster, posts on Facebook, 9.4 million people are following along, compared to about 1.8 million for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Three months after their losses in the November elections — and now three weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency — some Democrats concede they are losing an asymmetrical battle with the president and his MAGA allies, where Trump and Musk have dominated online spaces over the last month. And there is no consensus among them about how to fix their rapid response problems or who’s to blame, these Democrats said.
The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, started a rapid response account in January with about 121,000 followers, a fraction of DOGE’s reach. And Democrats held traditional rallies outside the USAID and Treasury buildings, where Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was mocked on late-night TV and by even some within his own party after leading a chant of “We will win!”
In the online war, said Chi Ossé, a Democratic New York City councilman who has built an online following through his short-form, explanatory videos, you “don’t see those folks anywhere.”
“Trump and Republicans have been able to grasp different types of media in how to get their message across that impacts society as a whole, and I do believe that Dem leadership is missing the mark, not only in the election but in our resistance 2.0,” Ossé said. “We need to be active in every medium.”
Instead, in the early days of Trump’s second term, they’re getting swamped. The rapid response account the DNC started in January is a fifth of the size of @RapidResponse47, the Trump White House’s account. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has almost a million followers. But Musk, who has posted hundreds of times over the last month, has more than 217 million followers. Some Democratic groups, like MoveOn.Org and Human Rights Campaign, are posting far less on X — if not leaving the site completely for Bluesky, a left-leaning version of X with far fewer users and nowhere the same audience reach.
Conservative personalities hold five of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify, while for liberals, only the New York Times’ columnist Ezra Klein cracks that list. When Ben Shapiro, the controversial conservative podcaster, posts on Facebook, 9.4 million people are following along, compared to about 1.8 million for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Three months after their losses in the November elections — and now three weeks into Donald Trump’s presidency — some Democrats concede they are losing an asymmetrical battle with the president and his MAGA allies, where Trump and Musk have dominated online spaces over the last month. And there is no consensus among them about how to fix their rapid response problems or who’s to blame, these Democrats said.
