Article by Steven Nelson on The New York Post
Trump gets around social media ban with new site that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday debuted a new webpage that allows him to circumvent the Facebook and Twitter bans on his accounts.
The site, donaldjtrump.com/desk, launched with a video declaring itself a “beacon of freedom” and “a place to speak freely and safely” four months after Twitter purged the 45th president and Facebook suspended him indefinitely.
At least for now, both Facebook and Twitter allow links to the site.
The launch comes as Facebook and Instagram prepare to announce a decision Wednesday on whether to allow Trump to return to the platforms.
The promotional video for the new Trump page associates Democrats with social media censorship and includes audio of President Biden’s White House adviser Susan Rice saying last year that Trump and his Senate allies belong “to the trash heap of history.”
Trump was permanently booted from his preferred social media platform, Twitter, and also was locked out by Facebook and Instagram after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The new Trump site contains some of his recent statements that were distributed in email blasts.
At the time he was de-platformed, Trump had more than 88 million Twitter followers and used the service as his go-to forum to break news or announce positions on policy and staffing. He has more than 35 million Facebook followers and more than 24 million Instagram followers.
Trump, who prided himself on being the “Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters,” was replaced by a commander in chief who does not tweet on his own, and therefore draws few eyeballs to the social network.
The new Trump site has a sign-up list for people to enter their phone numbers and email addresses to receive alerts when Trump posts a new message.
The site does not currently allow users to post comments or otherwise interact with the content, except for to share it on other platforms. It also does not appear to use advertisers, though it has a link to donate to Trump’s Save America PAC.
It’s unclear if the new Trump website will be a permanent or temporary workaround to reach his supporters.
Trump says he is considering running for president again in 2024, creating a dilemma for social media companies who already faced allegations of political bias in the 2020 election when they censored The Post’s reporting on documents from a Hunter Biden laptop that appeared to link Joe Biden to his son’s business dealings in China and Ukraine.
Twitter claimed it permanently banned Trump “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after the Capitol riot. House Democrats impeached Trump for a second time for allegedly inciting the storming of the Capitol, but he was acquitted in the Senate when only seven Republicans voted to find him guilty.
As president, Trump unsuccessfully tried to force Congress to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants social media companies immunity for most third-party content.
Trump allies in Congress are still pushing for legal reforms. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) last week introduced a bill that seeks to stop censorship by companies like Facebook and Twitter by declaring the platforms “common carriers,” a term also used for companies like railroads that must transport goods without discrimination.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/04/trump-debuts-new-page-to-replace-his-deleted-twitter-account/
