Is Donald Trump coming back to Facebook and Twitter? – After he was kicked off of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter following the January 6 riot in 2021, former President Donald Trump sued all of those platforms.
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But in the meantime, he moved to create his own social media company, including its own network, Truth Social.
The idea was to get his message out without the need to use established social media companies.
And he’s stuck with that, even though Elon Musk, after he bought Twitter, reinstated Trump’s banned account; the former president has not posted any new tweets since then.
With Donald Trump once again running for president, it doesn’t appear that his Truth Social-only strategy is working. Truth Social posts usually draw a fraction of the engagement that Trump’s tweets once did.
And now, it looks like Donald Trump is pushing to get his Facebook account back.
“We believe that the ban on President Trump’s account on Facebook has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” Trump’s campaign wrote in a letter to Facebook parent company Meta, which was obtained by NBC News.
Rather than threaten a lawsuit, Trump’s team asked for a meeting with Meta. And a spokesperson for that company told NBC News that they “will announce a decision in the coming weeks in line with the process we laid out.”
The report added that Facebook’s ban on Donald Trump in 2021 was described as a “limited ban,” which would come up for review two years later. January 7 marked the second anniversary of the Facebook ban.
One Republican suggested using the new Republican House majority as leverage to pressure Meta about Trump’s account.
“If Facebook wants to have this fight, fine, but the House is leverage, and keeping Trump off Facebook just looks political,” the adviser told NBC News.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), on the other hand, had called for Trump to be kept off Facebook in a letter to the company last month.
“Following the 2022 midterm elections, we write to urge Meta to maintain its commitment to keeping dangerous and unfounded election denial content off its platform,” Rep. Schiff said in the letter. He added that Trump has been using Truth Social to post misinformation since he launched it.
“To that end, we also urge Meta and its leadership to continue the suspension of former president Donald Trump’s Facebook account beyond January, and to carefully monitor and counter the spread of harmful election misinformation, including the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election, on Facebook.”
Twitter’s ban on Donald Trump was described at the time as “permanent,” although Musk’s decision made it less permanent.
One expert said that they expect Trump to eventually return to Twitter.
“Trump is probably coming back to Twitter. It’s just a question of how and when,” a source described by NBC News as “a Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with Trump about returning to the platform.”
“He’s been talking about it for weeks, but Trump speaks for Trump, so it’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do or say or when.”
Another source told NBC that Trump has been plotting how to come back to Twitter, and has even sought advice about what his first tweet should be when he comes back.
If Trump were to return to the more traditional social media companies, it might have the effect of stripping Truth Social of much of its value.
Not only is it the only place for Trump supporters to get the former president’s social media missives directly, but Truth Social has been sold, since the beginning, as a place users can trust, unlike other, “biased” platforms like Facebook and Twitter. That would be undercut if Trump returned to posting on them.
At any rate, Facebook is less of a direct commentator to Truth Social than is Twitter, as Trump’s social network clearly based its interface much more on Twitter than on Facebook.
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Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.