Former president turned failed blogger and upstart tech founder Donald Trump has found a new video and streaming service for his social media site. In a statement released Tuesday, the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced it was entering into a “wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement,” with the provocative video sharing site Rumble, which would see it deliver video and streaming for Trumpistan Twitter clone Truth Social.
“As part of our mission, TMTG continues to align with service providers who do not discriminate against political ideology,” Chairman Trump said according to the press release. “Therefore, I have selected the Rumble Cloud to serve as a critical backbone for TMTG infrastructure. TMTG has already launched Truth Social on the Rumble Cloud for invited guests only, and the initial Beta launch has been excellent. America is ready for TRUTH Social, and the end to cancel culture.”
In addition to serving as a video embed source for Trump’s “Truths,” TMTG said it is in exclusive negotiations with Rumble to provide infrastructure and video delivery services for TMTG’s supposedly upcoming on-demand streaming product TMTG+. TMTG did not respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment asking for more specific details about the partnership.
Truth (which the company wants people to write as TRUTH, but we’re not doing that) represents the social media arm of Trump’s larger TMTG, which he claims has already rased $US1 ($1) billion from investors. Oh, and yeah, it also plans to go public through a SPAC. That deal would let TMTG merge with a shell company called Digital World Acquisition Corp, which would potentially shield TMTG from the types of financial disclosures usually needed for an IPO.
TMTG, however, is already under federal investigation by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) — though, at this stage, the SEC and FINRA are reportedly just asking questions.
In the partnership statement, Rumble’s CEO Chris Pavlovski described his company as a neutral platform “designed to be immune to cancel culture,” that hosts “diverse ideas and opinions.” Those diverse ideas include QAnon screeds, vaccine misinformation, and other content deemed beyond the pale even for YouTube.
Rumble has recently tried to expand its reach by striking deals with former Democratic Party presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and journalist Glenn Greenwald to bring them onto the platform. Still, the right is primarily responsible for much of Rumble’s recent success. The platform has reportedly seen its membership skyrocket over the last year as provocative commentators and their audience flocked to the program under the alleged threat of takedown from more mainstream platforms. Pavlovski claims the site’s active users increase from 1 million to 30 million between the summers of 2020 and 2021, the Washington Post notes.
This isn’t Trump’s first parley with Rumble. The former president turned to the site back in June as the platform of choice for his own personal account after being banned from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and pretty much anywhere else of mainstream relevance online. That decision irked the cadre of other far-right friendly platforms, most notably Gab, which had spent the first half of 2020 all but begging Trump to enter their camps. Trump only chose Rumble after euthanizing his own personal blog, which crashed and burned in less than a month after being launched.