Trump Spokeswoman Comments on Whether He Will Return to Twitter, Facebook

Trump Spokeswoman Comments on Whether He Will Return to Twitter, Facebook
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the 2022 Zionist Organization of America Superstar Gala after receiving the ZOA Theodor Herzl Medallion at Pier Sixty in New York City on Nov. 13, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Mimi Nguyen Ly
1/19/2023
Updated:
1/19/2023
0:00

Is former President Donald Trump planning to rejoin the land of tweets?

Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington did not deny the move nor explicitly confirm the move in an exclusive interview with the “Newsmakers” Epoch Times–NTD collaborative program late Wednesday, following reports that leading up to the U.S. presidential race 2024, Trump might be seeking to return to Twitter and Facebook.

“We’ll have to see what happens,” she said. “I’m not here to make any announcement as of yet.”

But she did hint at it, in emphasizing the importance of First Amendment rights and, by extension, the ability for a person to have a presence on multiple social media platforms.

“We do know that Truth Social is doing incredibly well,” Harrington said, referring to Trump’s own social media platform, which was launched in February 2022.

“There’s no shadow banning, there’s no censorship, there’s really hardly any bots on the platform. It’s a great platform for free speech. But we will see if [Trump is] going to return to Twitter and use it as an asset for the campaign,” she said.

The suspended Twitter account of Donald Trump appears on a laptop screen on Jan. 08, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)<br/>Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The suspended Twitter account of Donald Trump appears on a laptop screen on Jan. 08, 2021. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“I think the more platforms, the better, the more open and free they are, and it is important to reach masses of audiences. Nobody has done it better than President Trump than the way he’s skillfully used not just Twitter but now launching Truth Social, which has been really such a success and important platform to have more voices involved, so that will continue.”

Trump, in November 2022, suggested he had no interest in rejoining Twitter even after he was reinstated due to orders from Elon Musk. Trump had been off the platform since Jan. 8, 2021, when Twitter suspended him.

Trump Says Team is ‘Talking to’ Meta

Trump, who announced his presidential bid in November 2022, told Fox News Digital late Wednesday that his team is “talking to” Meta in a push to reinstate him on the platform.
Trump has been off Facebook since the platform suspended him on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the breach of the U.S. Capitol which temporarily interrupted a joint session of Congress that convened to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Facebook had banned Trump indefinitely at first, but it later said it would reassess the ban in January 2023.

“I think we want a lot of options on the table and also to put everyone on notice that, again, this is in violation of fundamental constitutional rights,” Harrington told Newsmakers in response to a query about Trump’s efforts to rejoin Facebook.

“You’re talking about removing the sitting President of the United States, silencing him and millions of his followers, that’s what Facebook did, that’s what Twitter did ... And I think it’s important that we brought in this conversation because Twitter gets a lot of the attention because Elon Musk bought it and there has been the Twitter Files, and that’s been a great thing,” Harrington said.

“However, what’s been missing from the conversation is what Facebook has done—[it’s a] large [platform] has a lot more users than Twitter does. [It] has more powers, especially with Instagram,” she said.

“Youtube, owned by Google—they do the same illegal censorship that these other tech companies have been engaging in with the government. So it’s very important that we free these up, and I think it’s one tactic for us to be engaging and making sure that these are free platforms if we want to have a free country.”

Musk, who purchased Twitter in October 2022, speculated late Wednesday that the Biden administration “may try to weaponize Federal agencies against Twitter” if Trump is actually preparing to return to the platform.

Harrington told Newsmakers that Musk’s actions to expose government influence on Twitter have shown that Americans’ First Amendment “has been under attack.”

“That’s something that’s so unacceptable. I think the more speech, the better,” she said.

“President Trump has already laid out his plan to curb the censorship regime—which is exactly what it is—and he’s going to be continuing to make steps to end that as well,” she said.

“We can’t have First Amendment if half the country is not able to speak freely,” Harrington said.

“It’s even more so than that, it’s not even a right or left issue. It’s an issue with all types of censorship on all type of viewpoints that are deemed ‘inappropriate’ by the censorship regime. That is very unhealthy for the Constitutional Republic. It violates our constitutional rights.”