Former President Donald Trump received a lifetime ban from Twitter after his habitual abuses of the social media platform's terms of service were cited as a direct contributor to the insurrection and attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump—when that ban was enacted—tried to log in from several other accounts, including the official President Of The United States handle (@POTUS) and his son's and aides accounts.
After Twitter acted quickly to quash those efforts, it appeared Trump had learned his lesson. No obvious attempts were made for some time.
But—to nobody's surprise—he had not learned anything.
A new account, labeling itself "The Desk Of Donald J. Trump" turned up on Wednesday, May 5. By the evening of Wednesday, the account had been swiftly banned.
The account, and several mirrors like it with equally uncreative names such as "The Desk Of Donald J. Trump 1" were automatically updated from a separate blog Trump himself appeared to be running. The blog resembles Trump's former Twitter account in that it has become Trump's new outlet to share misinformation and attacks on his perceived enemies such as Republicans Liz Cheney and Mitch McConnell.
A spokesperson for Twitter said Trump would not get away with these cheap evasion tactics so easily.
"As stated in our ban evasion policy, we'll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account."
Facebook also recently upheld its decision to maintain a ban on Trump's account on their platform, which Facebook also banned as a result of the insurrection on January 6.
In one of the few posts that managed to see the light of day before one of his newest accounts was banned, Trump had quite a bit to say about both Facebook and Twitter.
Trump wrote:
"What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country."
"Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before."
"The People of our Country will not stand for it! "
"These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process."
For those, like Trump, who don't know, free speech is a right involving citizens and the government.
It is not freedom from consequences and it does not apply between a private company and their customers/users.
Twitter continues to hold firm to its position and block these new accounts as they show up—but really, it's a bit fascinating how many of them Trump seems willing to create to try and break the rules of private enterprise at any cost.
Keith Pedersen/Facebook
