Former President Donald Trump is suddenly, and uncharacteristically, silent.
A highlight of his website, the “From the desk of Donald J. Trump” through which he’s recently offered his thoughts on a variety of people and issues, is now gone. Launched May 4, it lasted less than a month.
“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Miller told CNBC via email.
The Washington Post reported last month that during one week in May, the heavily promoted “From the desk of” feature was “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, according to data” from social media analytics firms.
The offerings often sounded like the things Trump used to write on Twitter, before he was banned from the social media platform two days after the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Twitter said Trump could no longer post because it carried “the risk of further incitement of violence.” He’s also, for the time being, been removed from Facebook.
The now-gone statements on Trump’s website included endorsements of some political figures and repetition of the false narrative that widespread voter fraud was the reason President Joe Biden won the presidential election.
Last month, for example, Trump complained about “The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020,” which he said was “corrupt” and “the greatest Fraud in the history of our Country!” There is no evidence to support those claims.
On Monday, New York Times Trump reporter Maggie Haberman reported that the former president “has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated [as president] by August” even though there is no mechanism by which that can happen.
The absence of Trump’s statements comes shortly after he relocated to his Bedminster, N.J., golf club for the summer. His Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach closes during the steamy summer months.
No evidence of fraud
There is no evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Republican elections officials and in multiple states and cybersecurity experts in and out of government said there was no widespread fraud. Elected Republicans who supported former President Donald Trump’s re-election certified President Joe Biden as the winning their states.
Federal judges appointed by Trump issued multiple opinions finding there was no basis to the claims of irregularities.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Biden was the clear, legitimate winner. And Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, said there was no evidence of fraud that could have changed the election outcome.
