Former US President Donald Trump on Tuesday (US standard time) launched a space on his website where he can post messages that can be shared by others to Twitter and Facebook, sites where he remains banned.
The move comes a day before a decision from Facebook’s oversight board on whether to uphold Trump’s indefinite suspension from the platform. Trump was barred from a slew of social media platforms following the deadly Jan 6 storming of the US Capitol by his supporters.
Trump’s senior adviser, Jason Miller, said in a tweet that this collection of posts was not the social media platform that Trump has plans to launch. “We’ll have additional information coming on that front in the very near future,” he tweeted.
The site, which was first reported by Fox News, is dubbed “From the Desk of Donald J Trump” and contains posts from Trump that can be shared and liked. A source familiar with the matter said it was built by Campaign Nucleus, the digital services company created by Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Posts on the site repeated Trump’s false claim that he lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud and denigrated fellow Republicans who have been critical of him like Senator Mitt Romney and Representative Liz Cheney.
Twitter and Facebook have both removed content posted from other accounts that they said tried to circumvent their bans on Trump.
A Twitter spokesman said sharing content from the website would be permitted as long as the material did not otherwise break Twitter’s rules, but that attempts to circumvent a suspension would not be permitted – for example, imitating a suspended account to try to replace it.
He said Twitter would look out for any such cases.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how it would treat posts shared from the new space.
Twitter, which Trump used heavily and where he had 88 million followers, has said its ban on him is permanent, even if he runs for office again. Alphabet Inc’s YouTube has said it will restore Trump’s channel when it decides the risk of violence has decreased.❐
