Former US President Donald Trump. JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS
The former US president was banned from the social network in January 2021 for encouraging his supporters during the attack on Congress.
Donald Trump posted a video on Facebook and YouTube on Friday for the first time since his suspension in 2021. Social media giant Meta announced in late January that it would reactivate the former US president’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram, two years after his exclusion. “I’M BACK!”wrote the former Republican president, who is seeking a second term in 2024. In a short, old video, he says: “Sorry to keep you waiting, it was complicated.” The Republican had been excluded from the social network in January 2021, while he was still in power, for having encouraged his supporters during the attack on Congress in Washington. This unprecedented decision was imitated at the time by most mainstream social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
He accompanied those words with a short CNN video, in which he is flanked by his Vice President Mike Pence and his son Barron, and which appears to date from the night of his election in 2016. “Sorry to have kept you waiting, it was complicated”, he says. His post was greeted with hundreds of comments, including several “Happy to see you again” And “What a relief that you are back Mr. President”.
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Earlier Friday, online video platform YouTube announced it was ending its suspension. “As of today, the channel “Donald J.Trump” no longer subject to restrictions”, said the American giant on Twitter. To justify its decision, YouTube said on Friday that it had evaluated “the risk of violence”while taking into account the importance for voters to hear “equally the major national candidates”. Donald Trump had already been re-admitted on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in recent months. Until now, he communicated mainly through his own platform, Truth Social.