A Twitter account created in association with a new blog for ex-President Donald Trump has already been suspended. The Trump blog, at donaldjtrump.com/desk, was set to be served by a Twitter account with the handle @DJTDesk that would share his remarks — but Trump has been banned from Twitter, and the site has consistently established that no covert attempts to consistently get his rhetoric on the platform will be allowed. In other words, Trump proxies are not going to be able to operate on the site.
The @DJTDesk account was promptly shut down following its creation. Trump adviser Jason Miller “told The Hill that the account was not affiliated with the former president,” according to that publication, but it’s still not quite clear who actually made the account. In theory, Miller could have been maintaining that distance in an effort to keep up a show of evading Twitter’s ban against Trump personally, but either way — the high-profile account suspension is a loss for Trump.
Twitter suspended the Trump blog account @DJTDesk. Twitter spokesperson said: As stated in our ban evasion policy, we’ll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account. pic.twitter.com/v2RYslP8Xg
— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) May 6, 2021
This week, an oversight board at Facebook revealed that they’d decided in favor of Trump’s ban from that company’s platform, and in response, a slew of top Republicans have attempted to depict the move as a representation of some kind of conspiracy to silence conservatives — but that’s not the issue. In reality, Trump used social platforms including Facebook and Twitter to spread his lies about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election that inspired the rioting at the Capitol in January — that’s the issue.
Besides, no matter any Republican rhetoric, Trump isn’t even “silenced,” because he can go on Fox or any other network that will have him and get his rhetoric broadcast into homes across the country. He’s already been on Fox (and elsewhere) over and over since exiting the presidency. Republicans who insist on spiraling off down their conspiratorial rabbit trails instead of acknowledging the reality at hand are not doing the country any favors. Notably, during one of his recent appearances on Fox, Trump claimed that Twitter is “no good anymore” following his removal from the platform — but the company reported revenue for the first quarter of 2021 that was 28 percent higher than the revenue from the previous year’s first quarter.
