Donald Trump’s short-lived attempt to blog is over. Aide Jason Miller told CNBC that the former president’s page, From the Desk of Donald J. Trump, was “just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on.” CNBC says Miller provided no further details about the nature of those efforts. “Hoping to have more information on the broader efforts soon, but I do not have a precise awareness of timing,” he said. This isn’t difficult to translate. Trump got bored, so he quit. And Miller has no idea what the erstwhile president plans to do next.
As is true of most bloggers, Trump once had grand dreams for his venture. The blog was first supposed to be a new social-media platform, all to satisfy Trump’s itch to post. Banned from Twitter, his platform of choice, and Facebook, where his fellow boomers go to rot their brains, he was a warrior without a weapon. But to build a true competitor to his enemies’ websites, Trump would have to spend money and work hard. It became clear, quickly, that his pet project would not take on Twitter. Instead, it was something smaller and more pathetic: a blog.
Blogging does require some effort as well, and according to the Washington Post, Trump expected immediate results. An anonymous aide told the Post “that the former president wanted to open a new ‘platform’ and didn’t like that this platform was being mocked and had so few readers.” Look, a blogger’s life is not for everyone!
The ex-blog now redirects to a page urging the noble visitor to sign up for text alerts. It was interesting to ponder these “EXCLUSIVE updates,” if only for a few cursed moments of my vanishing life. I thought if I trepanned myself in my living room, which is also my dining room, perhaps I could glimpse the glory that awaited me on the other end of the sign-up form. I sensed that something unholy had been called forth from the deep. Perhaps the Trump blog was simply too powerful to live. It had served its month-long purpose, which was to generate content for other bloggers. Guilty as charged! (I did sign up for the exclusive updates, by the way. The page took me to a fundraising site, and now Trump has my phone number. Feeling myself descend into hell, I stopped there.)
What will the ex-president do next, I wonder? I don’t need to drill a hole in my skull to figure this one out. He’ll keep releasing statements about “junky” racehorses and sometimes politics, he’ll go back to having rallies, and I assume he will seethe. Although the blog has gone to join its compatriots in the great internet beyond, this probably won’t be Trump’s last attempt to find a way to post. The man loves posting, and his followers are hungry for content. Posting is a desire for Trump, not a necessity; his blogging effort was pure vanity, a dig at websites that had wronged him. Trump still has power of a sort: The GOP is still very much his party, and the forces his presidency helped unleash are still with us. The blog was a toy. He’ll move on to something else soon.
