Name: Trump courts billionaire backers as he plans conservative-friendly social media platform
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Trump courts billionaire backers as he plans conservative-friendly social media platform

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CloseFormer President Donald Trump has told friends he has hundreds of millions of dollars in backing for a new social media venture that would give him an online presence and protect conservatives from being shut down online.Two sources familiar with discussions said investors included Silicon Valley figures motivated by fears of censorship and online “cancel culture.”Details emerged as Trump began a new phase of his post-presidency, giving television interviews from his Florida base in the week after his Senate impeachment acquittal.On Wednesday, he boasted about the millions of people who followed him on his now-shuttered Twitter and Facebook accounts and confirmed that he had considered buying a social media company.“We’re negotiating with a number of people,” he told Newsmax TV. “There is also the option of building your own site because we have more people than anybody, so you can literally build your own site. But we were being really harassed on Twitter. They were putting up all sorts of flags, I guess they call them, they were flagging almost anything you said.”Trump was banned from several social media platforms in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol by some of his supporters. Twitter, of which Trump was a prolific user, said the president’s tweets posed the risk of further violence.At the time, Trump said: "We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”Since leaving office, he has split his time between his club in Palm Beach and hiswhile gradually building a new political operation.Visitors have included House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as well as his second-in-command, Rep. , according to reports. His new website and email mailing list were put together by Nucleus, a digital campaign firm run by Brad Parscale, who was Trump’s 2020 campaign manager until he was replaced in July last year.Two sources familiar with discussions said Trump had also met with potential investors in a new online venture designed to allow the former president to engage with his supporters and protect them from being taken offline.Trump’s team is using the free speech argument to attract libertarian donors, said one Republican.“They aren’t the people you might expect,” he said.With impeachment out of the way on Saturday, this week triggered a new phase in Trump’s life after the White House. On Tuesday, he launched a on his one-time loyal Senate lieutenant Sen. Mitch McConnell, calling him a “political hack” and threatening to back rival primary candidates.A day later, he dialed into three television interviews to pay tribute to conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday, as well as to reheat his unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him.Chairman of the American Conservative Union it was impossible for Twitter, Facebook, and other tech giants to keep Trump out of politics. His TV appearances marked a welcome return for the 74 million people who voted for him in November, he said.“There’s a real despondent feeling among those people,” he said. “And many were buoyed to hear the former president. We never had a president get silenced before. It’s never happened.”A spokesman for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.In the meantime, many of his supporters have migrated to messaging sites, such as Telegram, or other microblogging sites such as Parler, which was itself taken offline last month by its host Amazon Web Services over a pattern of hateful posts. It later emerged that Parler had been in , offering a 40% stake if he made the no-holds-barred platform his online home, according to Buzzfeed News.Gab, a social media platform popular with Trump supporters, is even keeping a seat, or at least a handle, warm for the former president." is and always has been a mirror archive of POTUS’ tweets and statements that we’ve run for years,” wrote chief executive Andrew Torba in a recent post on the platform. “We've always been transparent about this and would obviously let people know if the president starts using it.”

CloseFormer President Donald Trump has told friends he has hundreds of millions of dollars in backing for a new social media venture that would give him an online presence and protect conservatives from being shut down online.Two sources familiar with discussions said investors included Silicon Valley figures motivated by fears of censorship and online “cancel culture.”Details emerged as Trump began a new phase of his post-presidency, giving television interviews from his Florida base in the week after his Senate impeachment acquittal.On Wednesday, he boasted about the millions of people...

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Rob Crilly

The Washington Examiner is an American conservative news website and weekly magazine based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is owned by Philip Anschutz. From 2005 to mid-2013, the Examiner published a daily tabloid-sized newspaper, distributed throughout the Washington, D.C., metro area. The newspaper focused on local news and political commentary. The local newspaper ceased publication on June 14, 2013, whereupon its content began to focus almost exclusively on national politics, switching its print edition from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine format.

Trump courts billionaire backers as he plans conservative-friendly social media platform

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