Trump blog page shuts down for good
- Former President Donald Trump's blog has been permanently shut down.
- The page "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" has been scrubbed from Trump's website and "will not be returning," his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC.
- "It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on," Miller said.
Former President Donald Trump's blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday.
The page "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" has been scrubbed from Trump's website after going live less than a month earlier.
It "will not be returning," his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC.
"It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on," Miller said via email.
He declined to provide additional details about those efforts.
"Hoping to have more information on the broader efforts soon, but I do not have a precise awareness of timing," Miller said.
But asked online later Wednesday whether the move was a "precursor" to the former president joining "another social media platform," Miller replied: "Yes, actually, it is. Stay tuned!"
Facebook and Twitter banned Trump from posting on their platforms after the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol by the then-president's supporters. Trump, who never conceded to President Joe Biden, repeatedly and falsely claimed on social media after the Nov. 3 election that the race had been stolen from him by widespread fraud.
Trump and his allies have long accused social media giants of being tainted by political bias and prone to censoring conservatives. The former president has teased the rollout of an alternative platform.
But the blog, unveiled last month and originally billed as a new "communications platform," seemed ill-equipped to take on the largest social media companies.
Miller clarified at the time — on Twitter — that the "Desk" page was "a great resource" to find Trump's statements, "but this is not a new social media platform."
At the time of his social media ban in January, Trump boasted tens of millions of followers on Twitter and millions on Facebook.
Trump's blog, in contrast, struggled to amass even a fraction of that engagement, NBC News reported a week after its launch, citing data compiled with BuzzSumo.
Since leaving office on Jan. 20, the former president, who has strongly hinted he may run for the White House again in 2024, has made just a handful of in-person appearances and has participated in interviews only with friendly media outlets.
Between Trump's departure from the White House and the launch of his short-lived blog in May, the former president had shared official statements through his surrogates, his office and his political action committee, Save America.
On Wednesday afternoon, the newly blog-less Trump, through his PAC, shared a new statement attacking GOP Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona as a RINO — a derisive acronym for "Republican in name only" — for vetoing a bill that would ban so-called critical race theory training for government workers.