Former President Donald Trump’s blog – a website where he shared statements after major social media companies banned him from their platforms – has been permanently closed, his spokesman said on Wednesday.
The “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” page has been removed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier.
It “won’t return,” its senior advisor Jason Miller told CNBC.
“It was just an addition to the wider efforts we have and are working on,” Miller said via email.
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He declined to provide any further details about these efforts.
“I hope to have more information about the larger endeavors soon, but I don’t have an exact knowledge of the timing,” Miller said.
But when asked online on Wednesday whether the move was a “precursor” to the former president joining “another social media platform,” Miller replied, “Yes, it really is.
Facebook and Twitter banned Trump from posting on their platforms following the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of the then president on January 6th. Trump, who never gave in to President Joe Biden, repeatedly and falsely claimed on social media after the November 3 elections that his race was stolen by widespread fraud.
U.S. President Donald Trump uses his cell phone while he is on Jan.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Trump and his allies have long accused social media giants of being tainted with political bias and censoring conservatives. The former president teased the introduction of an alternative platform.
But the blog, which was unveiled last month and originally billed as a new “communication platform”, seemed ill-equipped to take on the biggest social media companies.
Miller made it clear – on Twitter – that the “Desk” page was “a great resource” for finding Trump’s statements, “but this is not a new social media platform.”
At the time of his January social media ban, Trump had tens of millions of followers on Twitter and millions on Facebook.
Trump’s blog, on the other hand, struggled to collect even a fraction of that commitment, NBC News reported a week after its launch, citing data compiled with BuzzSumo.
Since leaving office on January 20, the former president, who has strongly hinted that he could run for the White House again in 2024, has only made a handful of personal appearances and only participated in interviews with media friends.
Between Trump’s departure from the White House and the launch of his short-lived blog in May, the former president had exchanged official statements through his deputies, office and Save America political action committee.
On Wednesday afternoon, the newcomer Trump announced a new statement through his PAC attacking Arizona GOP Governor Doug Ducey as RINO – a derisive acronym for “Republicans by name only” – for vetoing a bill that did so would prohibit so-called critical race theory training for government employees.
