In a surprise move this week, President Joe Biden's campaign launched a new social media account on Truth Social, the platform founded and owned by his rival and likely 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Openly acknowledged by the Biden team as a joke, Trump trolled Biden right back with a sarcastic "congratulations" for having the "sense" to join his social media platform, Newsweek reported.

An insult and compliment in one

In Trump's typical sardonic fashion, the "congratulations" offered to Biden was combined with an insult of the current president's questionable capabilities and failed leadership on the global stage.

Early Saturday morning, Trump posted, "We are heading to World War III because of grossly incompetent leadership, headed by a President that doesn’t have a clue, although he did have the sense to just join TRUTH, the real VOICE OF AMERICA. Congratulations Joe, at least, on that!"

Newsweek noted that the Biden campaign, in addition to joining Truth Social mostly for the laughs it would generate, has also purchased ads on Fox News and other conservative outlets in an admitted effort to troll Trump specifically and Republicans more generally.

Purposefully trolling for laughs

Fox News was the first to report on the Biden campaign's plan to join former President Trump's Truth Social platform, ostensibly with the goal of "meeting voters where they are" and purpose of "injecting our message" into Republican circles in order to counter anti-Biden "mis- and disinformation" and hold "MAGA accountable on their own platform."

"Republicans can’t even agree on a Speaker of the House, so clearly, not every Republican thinks the same," one unnamed campaign official told the outlet, while another senior official said, "There’s very little ‘truth’ happening on TruthSocial, but at least now it’ll be a little fun."

Indeed, in a post to X-Twitter, the campaign shared a screenshot of the Fox News headline and wrote, "We just joined Truth Social, mostly because we thought it would be very funny. Follow us there for truths and retruths or whatever they call them."

In addition to getting the scoop on the Biden campaign's planned expansion into seemingly hostile social media territory, Fox News was also provided with a preview of what the Biden-Harris HQ account's first post would be, and as was reported, it read: "Well. Let’s see how this goes. Converts welcome!"

Biden camp gains more followers than Trump camp

Ironically enough, the Biden campaign's foray onto former President Trump's Truth Social platform could be deemed an instant success, at least as far as the current president trolling and upstaging his rival predecessor on his home turf.

Axios reported that within just a few days of being launched, the new Biden-Harris HQ account had already garnered more followers than the more established Team Trump campaign account.

In fact, as of Sunday afternoon, the Biden campaign account had more than 36,700 followers while the Trump campaign account had around 31,000 followers.

Everyone welcome to join Truth Social

The Fox News report noted that Truth Social, when asked about the Biden campaign's plan to launch an account there, proclaimed that it was a "free, open platform" that "welcomes anyone around the world to join."

As for the response of the Trump campaign, spokesman Steven Cheung told the outlet in a statement, "Crooked Joe Biden and his team are finally acknowledging that Truth Social is hot as a pistol and the only place where real news happens," and added, "Unfortunately for Biden, his continuation of spreading misinformation to gaslight the American people in order to distract from his disastrous record won’t work and they’ll be ratioed to oblivion."