Interesting. So it was a con from the get-go.

Yep. Though there were some media observers that genuinely believed that there was an opening for Trump to create a competitive media company to take on both Twitter and Fox News at the time. Remember, Fox was reeling from viewer dissatisfaction over their election coverage, and there was some legitimate thought that they were vulnerable to newly-ascendant right-wing media outlets like Newsmax and OAN News. Speculation ran rampant that Trump was going to start a cable channel and rival Fox, either alone or in partnership with Newsmax. It was a threat that Fox took very seriously in early 2021, when they were bleeding viewers to Newsmax and OAN.

Of course, what ended up actually happening was that Trump half-assed it, and ended up doing nothing more than an off-the-shelf Mastodon microblog skinned as Truth Social. He never pivoted away from politics into media, so the possible venture scaled down from "Trump builds media empire like Rupert Murdoch" to nothing more than "Trump uses Truth Social instead of Twitter." He never tried to do anything but the half-baked Twitter knock-off, and Fox recaptured their hold on conservative viewership once they could pivot back to enthusiastically pillorying the new Democratic Administration.

https://archive.ph/9408f
nbcnews.com - Trump s election circus over trump tv next america s