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Ex-President Donald Trump is hoping for a comeback.
But a permanent ban on his accounts can put this at risk
Photo: Patrick Semansky / AP
Prominent Republicans who are allowed to visit former President Donald Trump these days at his Mar-a-Lago house in Florida have only good things to say.
Naturally.
Senator Ted Cruz announced after a meeting with Trump a few days ago that the president was in an "excellent mood."
To do this, he shared a picture of himself and Trump at dinner via Twitter.
Both men smile in competition.
The message behind it is clear: Trump and his fans want to make it clear that the ex-president can continue to be expected as the political leader of the Republican Party in the coming months and years - including a possible return as a presidential candidate in 2024.
Nothing and nobody should stop him.
The problem for Trump: His comeback efforts are not going really smoothly.
The decision of the so-called »oversight board« at tech giant Facebook to continue banning it from the Group's platforms is probably the biggest setback for the time being.
Trump remains blocked from direct communicative access to millions of his followers.
After the attack by a Trump mob on the Capitol in January, Facebook and the tech company Twitter also permanently removed Trump's accounts.
Much was reported and discussed about the Twitter ban at the time.
He persists.
The now extended blocking of Trump's Facebook accounts remains the far bigger problem for the ex-president.
Facebook as the home of the Trump base
There are millions of his fans on Facebook, it is home to the Trump base. Above all, rumors, opinions and lies that Trump himself likes to propagate have been and are being spread here. For Trump, Facebook is the central medium for mobilizing his own following and collecting donations. In the 2020 election campaign alone, the Trump team spent millions of dollars on fundraising on Facebook. Trump was able to collect hundreds of millions of funds from supporters.
Facebook now continues to fail as an important advertising and communication tool for him.
The only good news for Trump: It doesn't have to stay that way forever.
The Oversight Board, which is supposed to independently assess the Group's practices with regard to account blocking, warned Facebook to review the decision on a permanent block.
In six months at the latest, Facebook should then announce whether Trump may return to the site under certain conditions.
The outcome of the re-examination is uncertain for Trump - and his comeback plans remain pending.
Because fresh money is a crucial lubricant for Trump to keep his power machine running.
Trump needs the millions so that he can secure his influence with the Republicans until a possible renewed presidential candidacy.
Among other things, he wants to support Republican candidates who fully support him before the next congressional elections.
They receive subsidies for advertising and major events.
Critics like the Republican MP Liz Cheney, on the other hand, would like to muzzle Trump.
He wants to send his own candidates into the race against them and other internal party opponents in the republican primaries, who are supposed to dispute their places.
In his need, the president is already switching to other methods of fundraising.
He recently revived his donation organization.
Under the slogan “Save America” - “Save America”, the company is now sending out emails in which potential donors are pounded for money.
Meanwhile, Trump had other fundraisers in his own party prohibited from collecting money in his name by letter from a lawyer.
Donations from his fans should only benefit him.
Look for alternatives
Trump's "war chest" is still well filled.
His donation organization is said to have a good 85 million dollars in its accounts.
But election campaigns in the US are costly.
If money does not come soon, Trump's influence on the election campaigns in the party is likely to wane.
No wonder his most loyal friends in the Republican Party are furious at the Facebook decision.
It was time to finally put a stop to big tech companies like Facebook, complained Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
The big tech companies would "persecute" conservatives.
They would therefore have to be "smashed" by the legislature.
Republican MP Lauren Boebert from Colorado, a fanatical Trump supporter who likes to be with a gun on her belt, made a dire threat against Facebook: The company would "pay a price" for its decision against Trump, she said.
"Remember my words."
Trump himself issued a message shortly after the Facebook decision in which he once again mocked Facebook, Twitter and Google as "total embarrassment" for the USA.
You have robbed the president of his right to freedom of expression, he grumbled.
Interestingly enough, Trump's announcement was otherwise very brief and inconspicuous.
Confidants of the President had previously spread that Trump allegedly saw the matter calmly.
He doesn't need Facebook to be successful.
It fits that Trump started his own blog almost at the same time as the Facebook decision. There he wants to comment on current political developments in the future. Messages in typical Trump style can already be found at the web address. Opponents are attacked, fans praised. Supporters of the president can then redistribute these posts via social media. This is how Trump obviously wants to bypass the social media ban.
As if to prove that his new idea supposedly works perfectly, the ex-president posted a new post on his new blog page shortly after the Facebook verdict was announced: In it, he once again attacked his party critic Liz Cheney.
According to his will, she should give up her post as Vice-President of the Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Cheney was a "warmonger" who refused to acknowledge that the last presidential election was cheated, he said.
Trump didn't say another word about Facebook.