Report: Trump Shut Down His Blog After a Month Because So Many People Were Making Fun of It - Vanity Fair

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And the mockery wasn’t even resulting in hate-clicks. 

By Bess Levin

June 2, 2021

Back in March, after Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter for inciting an insurrection, his spokesperson Jason Miller appeared on Fox News and declared the following: “We’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform…this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, it’s going to completely redefine the game, and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform…. I can’t go much further than what I was able to just share, but I can say that it will be big once he starts. There have been a lot of high-power meetings he’s been having at Mar-a-Lago with some teams of folks who have been coming in, and…it’s not just one company that’s approached the president, there have been numerous companies. But I think the president does know what direction he wants to head here and this new platform is going to be big and everyone wants him, he’s gonna bring millions and millions, tens of millions of people to this new platform.”

With a big pitch like that, you might have expected the ex-president to unveil a social network that at least appeared to be more robust than a simple blog on his website but in fact, that’s exactly what Trump’s “return to social media” “with his own platform” entailed. It was called “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” and the reason we’re speaking of it in the past tense is because just a month after launching, the ex-president’s blog, where followers could find typically unhinged statements on his burgeoning legal problems, has been shut down. And not just shut down but scrubbed of old posts, depriving supporters of an archive to scroll through during particularly tough times, when they want to be reminded that “almost 75 million” people voted for him (yet he still lost the election).

Why the sudden departure? While it’s a difficult time for many a media company, according to The Washington Post, Trump closed up shop because so many people were, appropriately, making fun of it. Also, it had almost no readers:

Trump rolled out the blog last month after being absent from social media since January, but his effort to regain some of the attention he received with his headline-grabbing tweets largely failed. An adviser told The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey 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. The individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about Trump’s plans.

According to Washington Post analysis published last month, posts “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” as of mid-May, had been shared to Facebook “on average fewer than 2,000 times a day—a staggering drop from last year, when his Facebook page fielded tens of millions of comments, shares and other interactions every week.” In other words, his blog was a “stone-cold loser,” which you might have thought would translate to hate-clicks but apparently didn’t even do that.

Of course, ask Miller and this is simply a strategic repositioning and Trump is soon going to be huge again on the internet, or something. In a sad, bullshit statement, he told CNBC: “It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on. Hoping to have more information on the broader efforts soon, but I do not have a precise awareness of timing.”

As HuffPost noted in it eulogy, “‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump’ was preceded in death” by many of its siblings: “Trump Airlines, Trump beverages, Trump: The Game, numerous Trump casinos, Trump magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks, a Trump travel website, Trump telecom, Trump University, and Trump Vodka.”

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Texas bill would ban teaching about America’s racist past and present

Giving kids historically accurate information about the country they live in? The Lone Star State can‘t have that! Per The Washington Post:

Under the culture war rallying cry of combating “critical race theory”—an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic, not just a collection of individual prejudices—lawmakers have endorsed an extraordinary intervention in classrooms across Texas. Their plans would impose restrictions on how teachers discuss current events, bar students from receiving course credit for civic engagement and, in the words of advocates, restore the role of “traditional history” to its rightful place of primacy by emphasizing the nation’s noble ideals, rather than its centuries-long record of failing to live up to them. “We should be teaching American history,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) recently told an interviewer with Sinclair broadcasting. “We should not be teaching that people are somehow unequal.”

(Incidentally, Ken Paxton tried to overturn the 2020 election, so maybe he shouldn’t have a say in anything, up to and including what is taught in schools.)

“Teachers don’t choose to teach controversial topics; they are required to,” State Board of Education member Georgina Pérez told the Post. “Ultimately, lawmakers want teachers to teach that there were ‘very fine people on both sides.’ This is classic Texas pushing back because there are people of color who are learning their history, and their fear is that if you are brown, as most children in Texas are, you are going to learn the good and the bad like we should and that these brown kids will become victims and hate white people,” she said. “That rationale is so far from reality that I can’t see it with a telescope.”

The Biden administration is pulling an Oprah in a drive to get people vaccinated

You get an Xbox! And you get an Xbox! And you get an Xbox!

As part of a major effort to boost vaccinations, the White House on Wednesday detailed an array of new incentives being offered by the private sector that include free food delivery, baseball tickets, Xboxes and chances to win cruise tickets, groceries for a year, and free airline flights. The announcement came shortly before Biden was scheduled to speak from the White House and declare June as “a national month of action” to boost the number of vaccinated Americans…. The White House said [Vice President Kamala Harris’s] focus will be on Southern states, where vaccinations lag much of the rest of the country.

Biden is also expected to touch on some of the enticements that his administration has helped arrange. According to the White House, they include: a CVS-run sweepstakes to win free cruises, tickets to Super Bowl LVI and cash prizes; gift cards from DoorDash; free tickets to Major League Baseball games for those vaccinated at stadiums; Xboxes distributed by Microsoft through Boys and Girls Clubs in hard-hit areas; free groceries from Kroger; and a sweepstakes run by United Airlines to win a year of free flights.

The White House also said, per The Washington Post, four of the nation’s largest childcare providers will offer free childcare to all caregivers and parents getting vaccinated or recovering from being vaccinated from now until July 4.

Surprise: Stimulus checks actually helped people amidst economic crisis

Funny how that worked out. Per The New York Times:

Julesa Webb resumed an old habit: serving her children three meals a day. Corrine Young paid the water bill and stopped bathing at her neighbor’s apartment. Chenetta Ray cried, thanked Jesus and rushed to spend the money on a medical test to treat her cancer. In offering most Americans two more rounds of stimulus checks in the past six months, totaling $2,000 a person, the federal government effectively conducted a huge experiment in safety net policy. Supporters said a quick, broad outpouring of cash would ease the economic hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Skeptics called the policy wasteful and expensive. The aid followed an earlier round of stimulus checks, sent a year ago, and the results are being scrutinized for lessons on how to help the needy in less extraordinary times.

A new analysis of Census Bureau surveys argues that the two latest rounds of aid significantly improved Americans’ ability to buy food and pay household bills and reduced anxiety and depression, with the largest benefits going to the poorest households and those with children. The analysis offers the fullest look at hardship reduction under the stimulus aid. Among households with children, reports of food shortages fell 42% from January through April. A broader gauge of financial instability fell 43%. Among all households, frequent anxiety and depression fell by more than 20%.

While the connection between cash payments and a reduction in hardship probably seems obvious to anyone with a semblance of a beating heart, as H. Luke Shaefer, a professor at the University of Michigan who coauthored the study, reminded the Times, critics of such aid frequently insist that the needy will waste it on nonessentials. Which, clearly, in the case of the pandemic payments, turned out to be wrong. “Cash aid offers families great flexibility to address their most pressing problems, and getting it out quickly is something the government knows how to do,” Shaefer said. Extrapolating from the survey data, he estimated that 5.2 million children had avoided food insufficiency since the start of the year, which most (but not all!) would conclude is worthwhile.

In fairness, this is better than the toilet situation the Secret Service faced while assigned to Javanka’s detail

Elsewhere!

Anheuser-Busch says it will give away free beer if 70% of U.S. adults get at least partially vaccinated by July 4 (USA Today)

AMC Is New King of Meme Stocks, With a 2,900% Gain This Year (Bloomberg)

Elon Musk’s “Baby Shark” Tweet Sends Shares Soaring (Bloomberg)

Netanyahu Faces Ouster as Foes Reach Deal for New Government (NYT)

Robert Mueller to help teach law school class on his Trump-Russia probe (CNBC)

Exxon May Be Corporate America’s Canary in the Coal Mine (Bloomberg)

Hedge Funds Opt for Some Days of Remote Work—At Least for Now (Bloomberg)

Kentucky Derby Winner Medina Spirit Fails 2nd Drug Test; Veteran Trainer Suspended (HuffPost)

Don Jr. Has Found His Forever Home: Shilling Messages on Cameo for $500 (Jezebel)

Cicadas make their Olympic debut in miniature art scenes (Reuters)

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