by Sharon Rondeau
(Jan. 18, 2023) — Multiple parties are reporting that now that Donald Trump is a presidential candidate, he will again begin using his Twitter account, which was shuttered on January 8, 2021 by platform managers but restored in November by the new company CEO, Elon Musk.
As of this writing, Trump has not tweeted, but his profile has been updated to contain a link to his 2024 campaign website.
His followers total 87.7 million.
On Wednesday, NBC News reported it reviewed a copy of a letter the Trump campaign sent to Facebook asking to meet regarding his account, suspended at approximately the same time as his Twitter timeline, be reopened.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA30), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee while Democrats held the majority in the lower congressional chamber, asked Facebook’s parent company, Meta, not to reinstate Trump, NBC wrote.
The “Twitter Files” releases, made by independent journalists after Musk granted them access to company archives, revealed that Schiff was a leading proponent of censorship of voices he disliked on Twitter.
After his suspension from Twitter and Facebook, Trump launched the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which introduced a new social-media platform, TruthSocial, where Trump has exclusively commented since its inception in February 2022.
Upon its launch, TMTG declared it would refrain from “political discrimination,” “cancel culture” and would “stand up to Big Tech.”