Former President Donald Trump declined to confirm rumours that he is planning a social media comeback with his own platform but indicated that emailing press releases has been an effective strategy in getting his message out so far.
“We’re negotiating with a number of people, and there’s also the other option of building your own site. Because we have more people than anybody. I mean you can literally build your own site,” Trump said.
The former president also lauded the power of press releases, saying that they have been effective in getting his message out while taking less time.
“I do press releases. And frankly, they’re more elegant than tweeting, as the expression goes, they’re really much more elegant and the word is getting out,” the former president said. “You know, for me, it works. For other people, it wouldn’t work because a press release doesn’t mean that much.”
“But when I release—you know when I put out a press release, you see what happens. Everybody is waiting and I think I’m getting better and more coverage with that than I did with tweeting. And the tweeting gets you in trouble because you’re retweeting people and you find out that the retweets were not so good because the person, if you didn’t do research, that you’re retweeting is not the best. So it gets you a little difficulty every once in a while. But no, I like this better than Twitter. Actually, they did us a favor, this is better.”
Trump, who is known for sending out headline-grabbing social media posts, was permanently suspended from Twitter following the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol. The targeted policing of Trump’s posts occurred throughout his presidency and ramped up following the Nov. 3 election, when the former president and his team repeatedly joined entreaties to independently review the integrity of the results in several states.
Twitter justified its censorship by claiming that the president had violated its “Glorification of Violence Policy.” Trump had, at the time, just posted a message urging protesters to remain peaceful and leave the Capitol. The company has also removed many other accounts, including other conservative personalities and voices, on the ground of allegedly harmful speech.
Trump has also been banned permanently or temporarily on other social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
The former president has previously expressed his frustration while using Twitter, criticizing the platform’s “flagging” of his posts on content that they say are disputed, such as election fraud claims.
“We were being really harassed on Twitter. They were putting up all sorts of flags. They were flagging almost anything you see, everything I was saying was being flagged,” the former president said. “It’s just disgraceful.”
Perceived unbalanced moderation of users’ content by social media companies, which was exacerbated by their banning of Trump, has raised concerns over First Amendment rights and a lack of checks and balances regarding the decisions made by these companies. A growing number of Congress members have taken actions seeking to ensure that big tech companies are held accountable for their actions.
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