Donald Trump’s longtime spokesperson and noted lawsuit loser Jason Miller is reportedly planning to enter a cocoon and re-emerge as an even fouler kind of insect: a social media tycoon.
According to Business Insider, a “person familiar with the matter” says that Trump is already interviewing potential replacements for Miller, who will remain on his team in some capacity but will now be spending most of his time at a company that “currently owns a social media platform that Trump is considering using.” A source “familiar with the plans” described said company as involved with “next-generation” technology that “blows away anything else currently on the market.”
There’s not a long list of social networks Trump could be considering joining — he’s banned pretty much everywhere, for now, leaving only fringe networks like far-right sites Parler and Gab — and fewer still that could be described as powered by amazing technical prowess. Previously the Wall Street Journal reported top contenders included Facebook/Twitter clone CloutHub and a site called FreeSpace, relatively minuscule sites that have tried to attract conservatives angry about supposed censorship on mainstream destinations. But our next best guess that Miller is joining some kind of blockchain-powered social media site that bills itself as a free-speech utopia.
Politico reported this week that Trump is still debating which site he will end up joining, but it’s hard to imagine he will find a replacement with anywhere near as much reach outside GOP-aligned echo chambers as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube provided. This also wouldn’t be his first attempt at finding a new platform.
In March 2021, Miller promised Fox News that the president would be returning to social media within two-to-three months with “something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media [that is] going to completely redefine the game” and that “tens of millions of people” will join him. After months of attempting to build anticipation, the ex-president launched a blog titled “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump.” He abandoned the project weeks later amid widespread mockery for its barebones design and failure to gain much traction in terms of views or attention.
At the time, an anonymous Trump aide told the Washington Post the former president was infuriated by the lacklustre reception: “He wanted to open a new ‘platform’ and didn’t like that this platform was being mocked and had so few readers.” Miller also distanced Trump from the failed venture, describing it as “just [an] auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on.”
While Facebook has announced that Trump’s ban will end in 2023, conveniently right on time for the 2024 campaign season, he’s seemed less than thrilled with waiting it out.
“[Facebook] say they may allow me back in two years. I’m not too interested in that,” Trump told supporters at the North Carolina GOP convention in Greeneville, North Carolina, according to Politico. “They may allow me back in two years. We’ve got to stop that. We can’t let it happen. So unfair. They are shutting down an entire group of people. Not just me. They are shutting down the voice of a much more powerful and a much larger group.”
Trump has since returned to issuing statements on his website.
While it is of course possible that whatever Miller is working on could help pave the way for Trump’s social media resurgence, it’s also possible that ants could build tiny tanks out of chitin and start a war on bees. Hey. You never know!