Donald Trump was quiet for a whole month. After the failed MAGA coup of January 6, he’d been kicked off much of social media, including Twitter, his favorite, and he appeared to spend his remaining days in office sulking, with only Lindsey Graham and Mike Lindell as company. But on Tuesday he began what looks like baby steps back into public life. Well, maybe not “baby steps”: He released a lengthy, ranty, blog-like statement in which he mostly slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Now he’s back on Newsmax.
The occasion? The death of Rush Limbaugh, the conservative pundit and one of the chief architects of the current Republican Party, which Trump left in shambles. Being Trump, he didn’t talk too much about Limbaugh, mostly discussing him in relation to himself, such as his (alleged) belief that the election was stolen from him, which it was not.
Trump also discussed being in social media jail. He claimed that over the last month he “really wanted to be somewhat quiet,” which seemed legit. He did say that Parler, the seemingly on-hiatus “free speech” service that became a nest of oft-violent far-right talk, “wanted me very much,” though he also claimed that “mechanically they can’t handle” the amount of traffic he would bring to them.
He also slammed Twitter, who permanently banned him shortly after the failed insurrection even McConnell thinks he caused. “And I’ll tell you it’s not the same when you look at what’s going on with Twitter, I understand it’s become very boring, and millions of people are leaving,” he claimed. “They are leaving it because it’s not the same. And I can understand that.”
But he had a solution: “There is also the other option of building your own site because we have more people than anybody. You can literally build your own site.”
Of course, Trump has a habit of making bold announcements then not always following through. There was talk he was going to start his own network, to compete with Fox News. Would he — who is under numerous investigations and who owes money all over the world — even be able to start his own Trump Facebook or Trump Twitter? Then again, weirder things have happened.
There was also some to-be-expected baseless voter fraud nonsense.
Trump, now on Newsmax with Greg Kelly, is using the occasion of Rush Limbaugh's death to do a Big Lie tour pic.twitter.com/iaUMySkuat
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 18, 2021
But of course there was. It sure has been peaceful the last month.
(Via Mediate)