I Checked Out Trump’s Unhinged Streaming Site. Then Charlie Kirk Was Shot. What I Saw Shocked Me

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As my colleague Alex Kirshner predicted just after Election Day, Donald Trump’s return to the presidency has not actually been so flush for his tech outlet of choice, Truth Social. The stock value of parent company Trump Media & Technology Group is way down, his deranged announcements haven’t boosted overall usership, and the business still hasn’t come close to a profit. (This sore spot for Trump even comes up in his $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times, whose reporting, he alleges, directly caused Trump Media’s stock to plummet.) As such, Trump Media has expanded its offerings in the hopes of attracting more customers, including a new artificial intelligence search tool, in partnership with Perplexity, that frequently contradicts many of Trump’s own statements. But the most peculiar of these bonus features may be Truth+, an entire streaming service available, mostly, for free.

Of all the cash-intensive goodies now made available to Trump’s most die-hard stans, the Truth+ streamer is the most elaborate and overlooked. It’s been in the works for a while: The company began rolling out Truth+ just over a year ago, first adding a live-TV-streaming feature to the Truth Social mobile app in August 2024, then introducing Truth+ to popular streaming hubs like Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku. Access to the free streaming service expanded worldwide in July, with Newsmax as the flagship channel. Anyone with a Truth Social account can now access dozens of 24/7 live TV channels, watch more than 1,000 on-demand movies and shows “that Hollywood tries to silence,” and even use built-in DVR to catch up if they happen to miss an especially urgent broadcast from the MyPillow guy.

It’s clear Trump Media sees Truth+ as a key source of future revenue: The company is currently beta-testing a $9.99-per-month paid-subscription model for American users, known as the “Patriot Package,” and aggressively pushing a free trial of this upgraded televisual experience across the Truth Social feeds and even my cellphone. (Annoying as the texts are, I get the push: Trump Media burned tens of millions of dollars in cash for Truth+ research and development last year.)

Considering that Truth Social is the only media enterprise to boast explicit approval and a personal monetary stake from the president himself, I wanted to learn more about it firsthand. Earlier this month, I’d sent Trump Media a detailed list of questions about its viewership numbers and overall strategy, only to get this generous reply: “If an ardent anti-Trump writer for leftwing Slate wrote anything about Trump Media besides a predictable, mindless partisan hit piece, it’d be a miracle that he could post on his Bluesky account.”

Little did I realize that I would soon be confronting the way this network responded to its first big test: the awful murder of Trump loyalist Charlie Kirk.

Truth+ is about as disorganized, slapdash, and rambling as Trump himself. Customers are given a choice between the “Basic” subscription package, which is totally free, and the “Patriot Package,” which gives you at least a dozen extra channels, along with more on-demand films. Subscribers also get paid-Twitter-style benefits on their Truth Social accounts, complete with “red check verification,” a Truth+ “badge” for their profile, boosted feed visibility, and the ability to schedule and edit their “Truths.” These lucky users will also get to “accumulate gems” for all their devotion, which sounds like you’re playing the 2003 Hobbit video game but really means you’ll get some loyalty-style rewards “earned for participating in various activities across the platforms,” which you can then turn into cryptocurrencies registered with Truth Social partner Crypto.com.

The “Basic” TV list includes outdoor programming like Game & Fish, religious media like Daystar and Jewish Life Television, copaganda docu-reality like Reelz TV, syndication houses that rerun classic Westerns (Gunsmoke, The Virginian), and free versions of far-right news outlets like Newsmax and OAN. Altogether, they embody the MAGA base’s binding forces of fundamentalist faith, nature appreciation, midcentury nostalgia, and conservative opining. Many of these channels have indeed clashed with gatekeepers of mainstream airwaves. One America News, Right Side Broadcasting Network, Real America’s Voice, and WeatherNation were dropped by DirecTV and shunned by certain corporate advertisers thanks to their networks’ promotion of 2020-election and COVID conspiracies. Various international governments have investigated Daystar in the past, and the religious channel has lost many of its most high-profile hosts since November, when accusations emerged that its founders covered for staffers accused of sexual assault.

With the Patriot Package’s latest on-demand additions from the Great American and Curiosity libraries, Truth+ premium has a sweeping selection that in sheer volume alone is comparable to those from better-known, higher-paid services. The issue is that there just isn’t a lot that’s good.

The “Most Watched” feed, which stayed pretty consistent throughout my monthslong trial, makes for a good overview. There were quite a few low-budget and low-recognition crypto documentaries (God Bless Bitcoin, Cryptopia, New Money, Dead Man’s Switch, Tech Talk Time: Bitcoin in 30 Minutes), stories about Elvis (the short film The Gift, the documentary The Last Days of Elvis Presley), hagiographies of conservative icons (Elon Musk: To the Limit, and Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words), documents of natural wonders (Over Alaska, Great Rivers of Africa, New Zealand From Above), and military minutiae (More Tomcat Tales, WWII Liberation of Europe). You likely haven’t heard of any of these, and you aren’t missing out.

There’s also some real wacko shit that also pops up, usually near the front, as the most watched of the most watched. A common No. 1: an under-one-hour “documentary” titled Illuminati, supposedly produced in 2019 by DOC TV. (I can’t find anything about this company anywhere, but I did find that the film’s credits on Truth+ do not match those on IMDb.) Preceded, in my viewing, by a Charlie Kirk–hosted ad for the ivermectin peddler “All Family Pharmacy,” Illuminati uses a lot of stock footage and photos of people in Guy Fawkes masks (including one carrying a “Dump Trump” sign) as backdrop for a narrator droning on about the history of the Bavarian secret society. Frequently adjacent to Illuminati in the Most Watched list is another “documentary” titled Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space. Before I sat down to indulge in this “cosmic conspiracy” with the most demented alien animations I’ve ever seen, I was accosted by a Newsmax ad directing me to a poll asking whether Trump should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

I began flipping around Truth+ on Aug. 14, the Friday when Trump sent the National Guard into D.C. and the day before he was set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Starting at 11 p.m., I decided to catch my first New Tang Dynasty broadcast, since the Falun Gong–affiliated network has much more constricted nationwide access than many of its Truth+ peers.

My main takeaway was that NTD—despite the well-funded Epoch Media enterprise that backs it—is not a smooth operation, and not just because it’s a volunteer-staffed newsroom. NTD Evening News, hosted by Tiffany Meier, talked through many of the day’s subjects—the King Fire, Israel’s plan to split the West Bank (“aka Judea and Samaria”), California’s gerrymandering agenda—with the assistant of correspondents Mari Otsu, Luis Eduardo Martinez, and Arleen Richards, who didn’t do much scene reporting and were hardly shown on camera. (The one bit of on-the-ground livecasting was a segment asking Alaskans what they thought of the Trump-Putin summit.) Otherwise the channel was replete with news clips ripped from digital sources, along with shots at China sneaked in whenever possible. The most painful moment may have been the concluding “Sports Matters” segment, where Meier riffed with co-host Dave Martin while holding packets of paper from which they were clearly and awkwardly reading. Discussion of the upcoming Los Angeles Olympics was mostly delivered with stilted hamminess from both, with Martin occasionally shoehorning in jokes that Meier did not pick up on.

I caught more Truth+ streaming on the afternoon of Aug. 16, curious to gauge how other channels were interpreting all that news. It was all a bit annoying to navigate. NTD was blanketed with ads for its sister dance company Shen Yun as well as another dance competition overseen by Epoch Media Group. Lindell TV was suffering from “technical problems.” Not even WeatherNation offered any solace, packed as it was with ads for the custom-merch company 4Imprint and a skin “serum” called Plexaderm. (Multiple short reviews of the product in r/45PlusSkincare report that it “burned” users’ skin.)

The only media that was content to give me something was, alas, The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News, where the former congressman echoed Trump’s talking points on the prosecution of Brazil’s insurrection-fomenting ex-President Jair Bolsonaro and made his case for why the South American nation deserves better. (“I love Brazil … everyone dances like they’re trying to shake a credit card out.”) He’s been rewarded for this, considering that Vice President J.D. Vance later granted him an “exclusive” interview. I then turned to Newsmax 2 only to have host Rob Carson yell at me multiple times that “YOU’RE NOT STUPID!” (Thanks, Rob.)

But the most revealing broadcast of all emerged during the Bolling! episode on Aug. 17, hosted by the disgraced ex–Fox News mainstay Eric Bolling. One of his guests that day was none other than Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes, positioned in front of a Truth-branded step-and-repeat. The subject of their conversation was crypto, namely the aforementioned “reward token,” CRO, for paying guests. Bolling had to repeatedly clarify that “there’s no advertising here” and “I’m not selling anything, folks,” even as he gleefully displayed a chart of CRO’s price surge.

In fairness, that really wasn’t what they were selling. “Many people are probably watching this on Truth+ right now,” Nunes posited, as Bolling projected the service’s channel guide on his screen. “You will get reward points if you engage on Truth Social,” and if you have a Crypto.com wallet, “you can use these reward points to support your Truth+ subscription, which supports Real America’s Voice.” Bolling nodded his approval as he claimed that the onetime crypto hater Trump was the reason he’s now a true believer, not just a speculator. After that segment, I was bombarded with in-video ads for the Truth Social–Crypto.com partnership that would allegedly change the world of finance forever. No matter the channel, no matter the topic, no matter the other ads situated within the broadcasts, the Trump Media–Crypto.com ad was ubiquitous—every single day I watched, and likely beyond. The grift synergy is relentless.

My Patriot trial expired a week before Charlie Kirk’s murder, but there was more than enough to watch in the aftermath. Notably, the landing page for truthplustv.com went mostly blank the day after the killing, having up until then featured a prominent graphic of a smartphone with the Truth+ app open and The Charlie Kirk Show promoted with a host photo to match. (The phone screen has since returned, now with Bannon’s War Room featured up top and the God Bless Bitcoin thumbnail conspicuously visible on the bottom.)

When the initial reports of the Utah shooting came in, Real America’s Voice had been airing Human Events Daily With Jack Posobiec, whose host is perhaps best known to liberals as the Pizzagate truther and white nationalist conspiracist with a book endorsed by J.D. Vance. Fresh off a spate of fearmongering over NATO and “urban crime,” Posobiec looked far more concerned and emotional as the episode went on. “If it’s true that someone took a shot at my friend”—he paused for a few seconds before continuing—“the result from that must absolutely be swift, and it must be final.” The show ended with a Carshield.com ad starring Ice-T.

After Human Events came America’s Voice Live, broadcast from Detroit by longtime radio host Steve Gruber, who was already gunning for vengeance. “We better hear some strong condemnations immediately,” Gruber seethed, going on to mock libs who think that “white people aren’t being hunted” and that “there’s no animosity towards white males.” (In case it isn’t clear: White people are not being hunted.) The host updated his viewers with screenshots of the president’s Truth posts about Kirk, coupled with some on-the-ground footage from the Utah Valley University campus. By the time Bolling! started airing at 4, Kirk’s prognosis had become clearer for the host, Gruber, and their guests, correspondent Ben Bergquam and faux-psychologist Gina Loudon. “There is something about this that is pivotal for us—it feels like open season on certain groups of people in this country,” Loudon proclaimed, as Bolling anticipated that liberals would blame the gun.

When Kirk’s death was finally confirmed, everything halted. All four panelists were welling up; Loudon had to stop speaking after the tears began falling. Bergquam also cried on screen, and Gruber shifted from sniffling to informing the show’s visibly upset host that “the anger is coming now.” Unlike the performative whitewashed obituaries from liberal commentators and ill-informed celebrities, the grief here was vivid, real, and heartfelt; it was the first time I’d ever seen these hosts so speechless and bereft. I really felt for this community that had lost such a dear friend.

Those wouldn’t be the only tears I saw on Truth+. On Friday, during the time slot normally allotted to The Charlie Kirk Show, four of the late host’s friends gathered in the studio for a memorial episode, leaving an empty chair for the absent host. (“I know the seat looks empty, but it’s not. … The seat isn’t empty at all.”) Helmed by executive producer Andrew Kolvet, the panel featured Posobiec, Turning Point USA COO Tyler Bowyer, and Blake Neff, the former Tucker Carlson Tonight writer who was fired by Fox News in 2020 for his racist and sexist forum posts. Risible as these men are, their gathering did provide some genuinely touching moments of male friendship and emotional support. Bowyer broke down while recounting the ways he and Kirk had built up Turning Point; he also touched upon personal aspects of their friendship, mentioning that he used to give Kirk fashionable clothes as birthday presents. Neff likewise bawled as he mentioned being there in Utah and seeing Kirk’s gruesome shooting up close. “I’m glad you were there,” Kolvet comforted Neff.

Other shows retooled their broadcasts to share fond memories of Kirk, between visual tiles crafted in tribute to his life and accompanying bursts of bagpipe processions. On his Friday-morning Salem News show, Mike Gallagher told viewers that the “last thing I sent [Kirk] was a clip from X, with a little baby Charlie Kirk” that was reshared from the TikTok account “babycharliekkk” by tweeter Kathleen Winchell. “He responded with an ‘lol’ and a thumbs-up emoji. … He loved it.” Despite insisting that he desired to “focus on some positivity and talk about love,” the ex-congressman brought up “Antifa words on the shell casings” (untrue) and quoted an X influencer on how “a cultural revolution is on the horizon.”

After Gallagher signed off, Steve Bannon’s War Room brought on Alex Jones and the conspiratorial goldbug James Rickards, who compared Kirk’s killing to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination: “If you preach peace and love, and that’s your message, they kill you.” (It should go without saying that “peace and love” was not Kirk’s message.) On F1rst TV, Dana Loesch played a video from a North Texas college student who scolded the off-screen classmates rejoicing in Kirk’s death, yelling that “a transgender person” had fired the bullet. We already knew that the killer was not trans, but that didn’t stop Loesch from repeating the hoax that the bullet casings had “transgender ideology” etched upon them and recommending the girl for a scholarship.

On Saturday morning, the ex–NBA player and former Black Lives Matter supporter Royce White aired his self-titled show on Real America’s Voice, with an intro montage that spliced a clip of Bannon praising White alongside archival footage of Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali speeches. The red-pilled athlete called for “Antifa” to be “designated a terrorist organization” by Monday and scolded college leftists who did not properly mourn Kirk, blaming the scientific method (yup) for introducing university students to “the most insane, devilish worldviews.” White then made a call for all men to resist the “sexual manipulation” of the women “dancing” on Kirk’s grave. (“When I say women have gotten mouthy … ”)

At 3 p.m., Ted Nugent appeared with his wife Shemane, the self-proclaimed “oldest Turning Point ambassador,” for an episode of Spirit Campfire where she informed viewers of how Kirk had personally reached out to recruit her for Turning Point—a common story across Truth+, I noticed, considering that Real America’s Voice host Aubrey Shines also mentioned Kirk’s active recruitment of him during his tribute broadcast.

No wonder there was so much grief: Truth+ and its member networks make for yet another conservative institution that was in no small part curated and built up by Charlie Kirk.

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