Has the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) captured Truth Social posts for Donald Trump and when?

Executive summary

The available evidence shows mixed but concrete preservation of Donald Trump’s TRUTH Social content: independent, project-run archives have systematically captured his posts, while the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine contains at least specific snapshots of individual Truth Social items (including a capture dated September 16, 2024). Multiple archival efforts — nonprofit projects and automated scrapers — have been running to preserve Trump’s Truth Social posts, though their coverage, frequency and continuity differ and some workflows were later disabled ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

1. A single Wayback snapshot that proves some captures — but not comprehensive coverage

One clear, dated example shows the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine holding a Truth Social post from Donald Trump that was added to the archive on September 16, 2024, indicating the Wayback Machine did capture at least some TRUTH Social content ^[2]. This item establishes that Wayback indexed individual Trump posts, and it is part of a fact-checking related collection. However, the available material does not claim or document that the Wayback Machine provides comprehensive, continuous archiving of all Trump TRUTH Social posts; the evidence is limited to discrete archived items rather than an audited, platform-wide crawl record ^[2]. Readers should therefore treat the Wayback capture as documented but potentially partial.

2. Dedicated third‑party projects supply near‑real‑time archiving and richer metadata

Independent projects specifically designed to archive Trump’s TRUTH Social activity provide a different, more systematic record. The project “Trump’s Truth,” operated by a nonprofit, checks for new posts every few minutes and stores video transcriptions and image descriptions to improve searchability and preservation, demonstrating a focused preservation approach distinct from Wayback’s general web snapshots ^[1]. These projects are structured to capture high volumes of posts and accompanying metadata, offering near-real-time continuity that a generic web crawler may not match, and allow researchers to access a fuller historical log of Trump’s posts ^[1].

3. Automated scrapers and GitHub workflows formed another layer — with a defined operational window

A public GitHub repository contains a Python scraper that automatically harvested Donald Trump’s TRUTH Social posts into JSON and CSV formats on an hourly schedule, syncing outputs to an S3 archive for historical preservation ^[3]. This scraper represented an automated, machine‑readable archive and ran as a scheduled GitHub Actions workflow, providing frequent snapshots of posts. Importantly, that automation was later disabled (noted as deactivation on October 26, 2025 in the analyses), which means the scraper’s archive reflects a finite period of operation rather than an indefinite capture ^[3]. The presence of such tooling illustrates multiple overlapping preservation strategies beyond the Internet Archive.

4. Tools and institutional agendas influence what gets preserved and why

Archival coverage depends on the mission, resources and transparency of the organization doing the capture. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine acts as a broad public web archive and will capture items opportunistically or via targeted saves, exemplified by the September 16, 2024 item ^[2]. By contrast, nonprofit projects and researchers build platform-specific tools to ensure continuity and richer metadata; those groups have explicit goals of documenting public figures’ posts for accountability and research ^{[1] [3]}. Awareness of differing agendas matters: specialized archives often prioritize comprehensiveness for particular subjects, while general archives prioritize breadth across the web ^{[1] [2]}.

5. What this means for researchers and the public seeking Trump TRUTH Social posts

For anyone seeking a historical record of Donald Trump’s TRUTH Social posts, the practical approach is multi-source: query specialized archives and project repositories for comprehensive timelines and metadata, and consult the Internet Archive for individual preserved snapshots like the September 16, 2024 capture. The GitHub scraper and nonprofit archives documented above supply systematic exports and near-real-time harvesting during their operational windows, but also reveal continuity limitations when workflows are disabled ^{[3] [1]}. Users should therefore verify timestamps and provenance across multiple archives to reconstruct the fullest, most reliable record ^{[1] [2] [3]}.