Trump Pleads With Meta To Restore Facebook Account – Donald Trump has petitioned Meta to restore his access to Facebook, as he apparently plans to kick his 2024 presidential campaign into a higher gear. The former president was banned from Facebook more than two years ago after his supporters invaded the US Capitol in a failed attempt to prevent Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election from being certified.
Trump officials said in a letter to Meta obtained by NBC News on Wednesday that the ban “dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse” and should be rescinded. Meta said it would “announce a decision in the coming weeks.” Facebook and Twitter banned Trump a day after the January 6 attack, which has been linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement. Trump used his Twitter account to encourage supporters to gather near the Capitol. In a speech before the attack, he urged supporters to “fight like hell.”
He then took to Twitter to blast his vice president, Mike Pence, for failing to stop certification while the attack was underway. A congressional committee recommended that Trump be criminally charged in connection with the attack, the fate of hundreds of his supporters. Twitter lifted its ban on Trump after Elon Musk bought the platform last year. Trump, on the other hand, has not tweeted since, preferring to remain on his own competing social networking service, Truth Social. According to NBC, an anonymous Republican stated Trump had been bragging about returning to Twitter and expected the ex-president would do so.
Trump’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have 34 million and nearly 88 million followers, respectively. He has fewer than 5 million followers on Truth Social. Trump used Twitter and Facebook heavily during his presidential campaign in 2016 and during his presidency. Impeached over the Capitol attack but acquitted, Trump announced his 2024 run in mid-November. In doing so he sought to take credit for Republicans winning back the US House in the midterm elections, though their majority was much narrower than expected and many candidates Trump endorsed suffered high-profile defeats.
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