As Donald Trump settled into his semi-retirement phase, there was all kinds of speculation about what he might do next. Would he start a television network? Maybe form a new political party?
Much of the speculation focused on social media — the former president had been forced from his beloved Twitter — and Trump’s interest in creating a rival platform of his own. In fact, the Associated Press reported in March that the Republican was planning to unveil his own social-media platform “in two or three months.”
Jason Miller, a controversial spokesperson for Trump’s 2020 campaign, told Fox News at the time that the former president was poised to “completely redefine the game” with his new tech initiative.
It was against this backdrop that Fox News ran this report yesterday on Team Trump’s new tech rollout.
Former President Trump launched a communications platform on Tuesday, which will serve as “a place to speak freely and safely,” and will eventually give him the ability to communicate directly with his followers, after months of being banned from sites like Twitter and Facebook. The platform, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” appears on www.DonaldJTrump.com/desk.
The same report added that the former president’s project appears to be powered by Campaign Nucleus — the “digital ecosystem made for efficiently managing political campaigns and organizations,” created by Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager.
For now, it’s not clear how much Trump and his team paid for this “communications platform,” though I’m awfully curious to find out just how big an investment this was — because the project is hilariously underwhelming.
In fact, to describe this as a “communications platform” is itself generous to the point of comedy. What Team Trump has created is, for all intents and purposes, a rudimentary blog for the former president.
At issue is a straightforward website in which Trump can publish some thoughts, and then people can share those thoughts with others through social media. This technology and this format has existed for many years. In fact, it’s not dissimilar to the website you’re reading right now. The principal difference is, Trump’s blog doesn’t appear to link to any other websites — suggesting the former president has a new blog, but it’s not an especially good one. To be sure, I’m not criticizing blogging. I’m a fan of the medium, having spent much of my adult life doing it. But after the hype about Trump getting ready to “completely redefine the game,” it seemed that the former president would unveil something more impressive than a website the teenager who lives on your block could’ve thrown together in an afternoon.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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