Trump Wouldn’t Join Parler Unless He Owned Parler

I feel kind of stupid. I remember reading that Jared Kushner had talked Donald Trump out of joining Parler after he’d been banned by Twitter and indefinitely suspended by Facebook. It didn’t sound right to me. I could understand Kushner offering that advice, but I couldn’t understand Trump accepting it.

Trump was addicted to the rush of social media. He also saw it as vital to his success, whether political or financial. He couldn’t go silent, and Parler was just sitting there ready to be used.

Silly me. The answer was that Trump resented making Twitter popular and not seeing any direct monetary return. He wasn’t going to join Parler and bring them financial success for free. He wanted a stake. According to BuzzFeed News, the Trump Organization was working on getting the then-president 40 percent ownership, despite the fact that this would constitute bribery. These negotiations long predated Trump’s banishment from social media.

Trump would agree to put his social media posts exclusively on Parler (for a minimum of four hours) and then crosslink back to Parler when he later posted on Twitter and Facebook. He’d also dig up new investors.

This all makes perfect sense now. It’s another example of Trump doing something criminal and impeachable that will go unpunished only because it was never consummated. And, of course, there was never a chance that Trump would let a repeat of experience with Twitter happen again. He created value for Twitter and Twitter never paid him for it. He probably resents this almost as much as the Mueller investigation.