Former U.S. president Donald Trump once again has the power to blast his unedited opinions, insults and false claims across the internet, with the launch of a Twitter-like website made for one user: Donald Trump.
The ex-president’s new micro-blog, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” debuted this week on a page within his own official website, where users can sign up to get an email alert whenever he blasts off a message.
The micro-blog resembles social media platform Twitter, which banned Trump in January for encouraging violence during his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol. Facebook and YouTube also booted Trump off of their platforms, sparking a promise that he would build his own social media site.
Trump launched his Twitter-like feed on Tuesday, though it appears that he’s been filling it up with messages since at least late March. His announcement included a brief trailer touting the feed as a “beacon of freedom” in “a time of silence and lies.”
The trailer also promises a “place to speak freely and safely,” though that seems to apply only to Trump.
“From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” appears to be more of a megaphone than a social media community, with no option to comment or fact-check his words. Each message includes buttons for liking and sharing them onto Twitter or Facebook. It’s unclear if the site has an option for sharing photos, but there were none present in his feed as of Wednesday morning.
His feed is filled with the familiar rhetoric he used before and during his single term as president. So far, he has used the feed to push conspiracy theories, endorse allies, attack Republicans disloyal to him and blast his enemies.
Trump also appears to be trying to rewrite the meaning of “The Big Lie,” a phrase that many critics have used in recent months to refer to his baseless claim that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud. Trump now claims, without evidence, that U.S. President Joe Biden’s victory is the “Big Lie.”
“The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as THE BIG LIE!” he claimed on Monday.
Trump’s message was published at the same time that Liz Cheney, one of the leading House Republicans who has rejected his false election claims, denounced his “Big Lie” on Twitter.
“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” Cheney wrote. “Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
It’s unclear whether Trump or Cheney published their message first, but they were both time-stamped at 10:27 a.m.
Trump has been strongly urging his Republican allies to drive Cheney out of office after she voted to impeach him for inciting the U.S. Capitol riot. That riot erupted after Trump invigorated a crowd of his supporters with debunked claims about election fraud.
Trump’s lawyers lost over 60 court cases after the election while failing to prove that systemic voter fraud had any impact on the result. His top lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and most ardent supporter, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, are now facing billion-dollar lawsuits for their election-machine conspiracy theories around the result.
“From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” resembles a social media platform, but it’s not the one that Trump has promised, according to his senior adviser, Jason Miller.
“President Trump’s website is a great resource to find his latest statements and highlights from his term in office, but this is not a new social media platform,” Miller tweeted on Tuesday. “We’ll have additional information coming on that front in the very near future.”
A source familiar with the matter told Fox News that the site was built by Campaign Nucleus, the digital services company created by Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale.
It’s unclear exactly when Trump might launch his long-promised social media platform, but he won’t be returning to traditional platforms anytime soon.
Facebook’s Oversight Board decided on Wednesday to maintain Trump’s ban from Facebook and Instagram, which it first imposed on Jan. 7 following the Capitol riot.
The board criticized Facebook for imposing a “vague” and indefinite ban in the first place, and called for the case to be reviewed again in six months.
Alphabet has said it will lift a ban on Trump’s YouTube channel when the risk of real-world violence subsides.
Trump remains banned from Twitter with no hearings scheduled to review that status.
— With files from The Associated Press and Reuters
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