← Contents
Page 416 of 496
No. 496
Filed MAY 4, 2021
Press & Speech
Between Terms

Trump Unveils Visionary New Social Media Platform Whose Only Feature Is A Button Letting Supporters Repost Him To The Sites That Banned Him

The Filing

WASHINGTON. Citing a long-standing commitment to communicating directly with the American people, former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday unveiled a groundbreaking new digital platform, a single page on his website titled "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump," hailed by advisers as the future of social media and consisting in its entirety of his own statements next to a button allowing readers to share those statements on Twitter and Facebook, the two services that had permanently banned him.

The rollout, which followed months of teasing from aides who promised a service that would "redefine the game" and become "the hottest ticket in social media," delivered on that promise by reproducing the experience of a personal blog, a format that had been widely available since approximately 2003. Visitors to the platform could read posts by the former president, react to posts by the former president, and forward posts by the former president to the platforms from which the former president remained indefinitely excluded.

"This is a beautiful new way for the President to speak to his movement, totally uncensored," said one adviser to the former president, declining to be named while describing a webpage. The adviser added that the venture was "just auxiliary" to broader efforts underway, a clarification offered before anyone had asked whether it was the main effort.

The platform routed enthusiastic supporters toward DonaldJTrump.com, where the former president's leadership PAC, Save America, had been collecting tens of millions of dollars in small-dollar donations that could be spent on travel, legal fees, and other costs at his sole discretion. Analysts noted that the chief technical achievement of a communications product whose only outbound link sent traffic to the banning platforms was that it also sent traffic to a fundraising portal.

Readership figures, according to subsequent reporting, were modest, with individual posts drawing engagement well below the levels the former president had commanded before his deplatforming, a gap the new technology proved unable to close on account of being a webpage that nobody was required to visit.

At press time, the revolutionary platform had been quietly scrubbed from the website less than a month after launch, with aides explaining that the future of social media had been discontinued because something even bigger was coming.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment
← No. 495No. 497