Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term in 2024, posted Friday, March 17, 2023 on Facebook and YouTube for the first time since he was expelled more than two years ago following the assault on the Capitol .
“Sorry to have made you wait”
“I’M BACK!” wrote the businessman. “Sorry to keep you waiting, it was complicated,” he says in a short CNN video accompanying his message, which appears to be from the night of his election in 2016.
His words were met with thousands of comments, including several “Glad to see you again” and “What a relief to have you back Mr President”. Donald Trump has 34 million subscribers on Facebook and more than 2.6 million on YouTube.
Donald Trump was banned from social media in January 2021
Earlier Friday, online video platform YouTube announced it was ending its suspension. Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, made a similar announcement in late January. “As of today, the ‘Donald J. Trump’ channel is no longer subject to restrictions,” YouTube tweeted. The 76-year-old Republican had been banned from major mainstream social media in January 2021, while still in office, for cheering on his supporters during the attack on Congress in Washington.
On January 6 of that year, thousands of his supporters convinced that the 2020 election had been tainted by fraud, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, attacked the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of the election of Joe Biden.
A green light for “toxic content”
The NGO Media Matters for America strongly criticized Meta’s decision to let the former president use the enormous communication potential of the tech giants. “Meta’s decision is a green light for Trump to promote toxic content on its platforms, and it shows that the company still prioritizes profit, and appeasing far-right figures, over public safety,” she said in a statement.
To justify its decision, YouTube said on Friday that it had assessed “the risk of violence” while taking into account the importance, for voters, of hearing “equally from major national candidates”. In addition to YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, Donald Trump had already been readmitted in November on Twitter by new boss Elon Musk. Until now, he communicated mainly through his own platform, Truth Social.
Late Friday afternoon, he had not posted on Instagram or Twitter, his former favorite platform on which he now has no less than 87.4 million subscribers and which he used avidly before. his suspension.
In his last tweet, dated January 8, 2021, the one who keeps repeating that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him announced that he would not go to the nomination of his Democratic rival Joe Biden