politics

Trump Not Desperate Enough to Join Aide’s Social-Media Network

Photo: Brandon Bell/AP/Shutterstock

Since his unseemly exit from office, former president Donald Trump has wavered between semi-retirement on Mar-a-Lago’s back nine and seeking attention among the majority of Republicans who still heed his call. Unfortunately, owing to his lifetime ban from Twitter and two-year suspension on Facebook, he has had to resort to some desperate measures to get the word out, starting — and promptly shutting down — a low-traffic blog and holding a campaign rally in South Florida this weekend, despite Governor Ron DeSantis’s reported request that Trump call it off as the state grapples with the disaster at Surfside.

Now, thanks to former aide Jason Miller, we know one limit in Trump’s post-presidential search for attention. On Thursday, Miller — who recently laundered his conduct on January 6 in a feature by Michael Wolff — announced he would start “a non-bias social network for people all over the world.” The catchy name for such a bold enterprise pushing back against the perceived overreach of Silicon Valley platforms? GETTR. Unsurprisingly, it functions a lot like Twitter, but with the financial backing of a fugitive Chinese billionaire and hundreds of millions fewer users.

When he left Trump’s communications team earlier this month, Miller reportedly hoped that Trump would join GETTR, which would result in an influx of supporters that would chart the platform on a path to success. But according to Bloomberg News, Trump is not yet desperate enough to follow one of his aides in a venture that has no financial benefit to him:

One of the few staffers from the 2016 primary who stayed to the end, Miller shouldn’t be chided too much in thinking that Trump would follow along; after all, this is a man whose business depended on lending out his name or the false promise of access to him in exchange for millions in easy money. The ex-aide just forgot the second part of that equation.

Trump Not Desperate Enough to Join Aide’s Social Network