This photo illustration shows former President Donald Trump’s Facebook page on a smartphone screen in Los Angeles, March 17, 2023.
Chris Delmas AFP Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump sent it to Facebook on the first Friday since January 6, 2021, the Capitol riots, which caused the social media giant to ban the president’s account for two years.
Trump, whose Facebook account was reinstated in January, is expected to return to the Meta platform and Twitter after the two companies lifted the suspension of his profile.
Trump’s 2024 Republican presidential campaign has officially asked Meta to restore his Facebook account. But until Friday afternoon, Trump has stuck to his own platform, Truth Social, as the choice for campaign announcements and calumnies against political opponents.
“I’M BACK!” Trump wrote in all caps in a recent Facebook post, above a 12-second video showing the former president speaking at a victory party on the night of his 2016 election victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting — business is complicated. It’s complicated,” Trump said in the clip.
The post was Trump’s first since the day of the Capitol riots, when violent mobs of supporters stormed the US Capitol and temporarily disrupted lawmakers’ efforts to confirm Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
At least 1,000 people, many of whom were spurred by false claims of election fraud that circulated Trump in the months before it spread, have been arrested on charges related to the unrest, according to the Justice Department.
The previous 13 messages from Trump’s Facebook account were posted on January 6, 2021. The most recent shows Trump calling on his supporters at the Capitol to “keep calm.”
Two posts earlier, Trump slammed his own vice president, Mike Pence, for not having the “courage to do what needs to be done” after Pence refused to join Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat by rejecting the Electoral College primary vote.
last friday, Youtube said it would remove its own restrictions on Trump’s account, allowing it to post new videos.
A day after the Capitol riots, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Trump would be suspended from Facebook, writing, “We believe the risk of allowing the President to continue using our services during this period is simply too great.” The company said in June 2021 that Trump would remain banned for two years.
The former Republican president is seeking the White House again in 2024 and is currently the overwhelming poll leader among several other candidates who have officially become the GOP frontrunners so far.
In January, Meta said it would reinstate Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, explaining in a lengthy blog post that “we don’t allow people to speak, even if what they say is offensive or false.”
Twitter, which was bought by Elon Musk in a $44 billion deal last fall, moved to revive Trump’s account after the website’s new CEO conducted an unscientific Twitter poll on the question.