Which stage of grief includes laughing uncontrollably at a twice-impeached former president, who thought “blogging” meant trash-dumping incoherent press releases on a web page that he’s shut down because no one cared to read them? Because that’s where we’re at when it comes to the short life of “From The Desk of Donald J. Trump.”
The “communications platform” was launched a month ago as a response to Trump’s social media exile. The TV personality was banned from sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook after he used his accounts to incite violence and spread misinformation that led to the Jan. 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill. Trump, still desperate to share his disjointed stream of consciousness with his followers, launched the blogging site a few weeks ago as a feed to house various press releases responding to world events. But surprisingly — or not so surprisingly if you heard the news on Twitter — CNN reported earlier today that Trump had shut down the site, shifting the press releases to a different section of outdated-looking “Save America” platform.
Now, plenty of people had jokes as to why Trump may have decided to close up shop, digitally speaking, but according to sources close to the ex-president who spoke with The Washington Post today, the deciding factor was fairly straightforward: the site was performing so poorly, it started to bruise the man’s already fragile ego.
A Trump adviser told The Washington Post that the former president shut down his blog because he didn’t like that this platform was being mocked and had so few readers. https://t.co/GQLpdikBg0
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) June 2, 2021
The Post is reporting that Trump told aides to shut down the site after it was heavily mocked on social media. According to the article, Trump’s blog posts were shared just 1,500 times on its final day before his team terminated it — an embarrassingly small number compared to the millions of shares and likes his Twitter feed used to get. Sources who spoke to The Post said Trump’s team was worried his blog would also compete with the social media platform he still plans to launch sometime in the future, although with that dismal turnout, we can’t imagine why anyone would see the site as a traffic threat. Still, we’ll mourn the good times Trump’s version of LiveJournal gave us, like when he whined about not getting credit for the COVID-19 vaccine, and when he called the horse that won the Kentucky Derby a “junky.”
R.I.P. “From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump.” You truly were(n’t) ahead of your time.