Donald Trump dumps personal blog page
Former US president Donald Trump has quietly dumped his blog page, just a month after launching it.
Trump aide Jason Miller said the page, which had been called “From the Desk of Donald J Trump”, will not return.
“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Mr Miller said in an email to Reuters on Wednesday (US time).
Plans for the Republican former president to launch a social media platform have been teased for months by Mr Trump’s team but with little detail.
“I’m hoping to have more information on the broader efforts soon but I do not have a precise awareness of timing,” Mr Miller said.
Gone – and the blog won’t be coming back, according to a Trump aide. Image: From the Desk of Donald J Trump
The blog page, billed as a place to “speak freely and safely”, was launched in May.
It was intended to serve as a one-way means of communication that contained posts from Mr Trump that could be liked and shared to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, from which the former president remains blocked.
Mr Trump had spent the past month typing up a storm on the page as he continued to make false assertions about the 2020 presidential election. Among his most recent claims were that an entire database of election files had been deleted in one Arizona county
“The deletion of an entire database and critical election files of Maricopa County is unprecedented. Many other states to follow,” he wrote.
“The mainstream media and radical left Democrats want to stay as far away as possible from the presidential election fraud, which should be one of the biggest stories of our time.”
Mr Trump had claimed a monthly audience of 36 million for his new blog. But, according to the Washington Post, the site received just 1500 shares or comments on Facebook and Twitter on its last day.
A slew of social media platforms barred Mr Trump following the January 6 riot at the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Twitter, which had been a favourite medium of the president, has said its ban is permanent, even if he runs for office again. Before being banned, the businessman-turned-politician had more than 88 million followers.
Facebook’s independent oversight board determined the company was correct to suspend Mr Trump but criticised it for the ban’s indefinite nature. In May, the oversight board gave Facebook six months to determine a proportionate response to the case.
Alphabet’s YouTube has said it will restore Mr Trump’s channel when it decides that the risk of violence has decreased.
-with AAP