Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower in Manhattan on May 18, 2021 in New York City.
James Devaney | GC Images | Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump‘s blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday.
The page, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” has been scrubbed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier.
It “will not be returning,” his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC.
“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Miller said in email correspondence.
He declined to provide additional details about those efforts.
“Hoping to have more information on the broader efforts soon, but I do not have a precise awareness of timing,” Miller said.
Facebook and Twitter both banned Trump from posting on their platforms after Jan. 6, when a mob of the then-president’s supporters violently invaded the U.S. Capitol, forcing a joint session of Congress into hiding. Trump, who never conceded to President Joe Biden, repeatedly and falsely claimed on social media after the Nov. 3 election that the race had been stolen from him by widespread fraud.
US President Donald Trump uses his cellphone as he holds a roundtable discussion with Governors about the economic reopening of closures due to COVID-19, known as coronavirus, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, June 18, 2020.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Trump and his allies have long accused social media giants of being tainted by political bias and prone to censoring conservatives. The former president has teased the rollout of an alternative platform.
But the blog, unveiled last month and originally billed as a new “communications platform,” seemed ill-equipped to take on largest social media companies.
Miller clarified at the time — on Twitter — that the “Desk” page was “a great resource” to find Trump’s statements, “but this is not a new social media platform.”
At the time of his de-platforming in January, Trump boasted tens of millions of followers on Twitter and millions more on Facebook.
Trump’s blog, in contrast, struggled to amass even a fraction of that engagement, NBC News reported a week after its launch, citing data compiled with BuzzSumo.
Since leaving office on Jan. 20, the former president, who has strongly hinted he may run for president again in 2024, has made just a handful of in-person appearances and has participated in interviews with only friendly media outlets.
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