Trump Unveils New Social Media Presence
WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump on Saturday rolled out his new social media presence, inviting recipients of emails to his Save America PAC to subscribe to his page on rumble.com.
The invite was sent out just hours before the return of his political rallies, with an appearance in Wellington, Ohio.
Neither the email from his PAC or Trump’s Rumble page say anything about his future plans for the site, which, as of Saturday afternoon contained only nine videos.
The conservative platform also includes pages for Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump.
Until last year, Rumble was a relatively unknown video site that largely consisted of viral videos and news from mainstream media sources.
But in August 2020, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., took a long running personal battle with YouTube to another level, charging it censors conservative views, and began posting his videos on Rumble.
Other prominent conservatives, such as Dinesh D’Souza, Sean Hannity, commentators Diamond and Silk, and Reps. Jim Jordan and Elise Stefanik soon followed.
According to a February 2021 piece in Mashable, however, Rumble wasn’t initially created for the purpose of providing an alternative social media outlet for conservatives.
It was founded in 2013, the piece says, by tech entrepreneur Chris Pavlovski, who was angered, not by liberals, but by Google’s monopolization of the online video ecosystem via YouTube.
According to Pavlovski, he created Rumble because he wanted to provide smaller creators with an opportunity to make money with online video content.
The company is based in Toronto, Canada and currently has a team of just under 30 people.
But that February piece by Matt Binder, it is now clear, was a harbinger of things to come. It’s main focus wasn’t on Rumble per se, but on the fact Donald Trump, Jr. had recently embraced it.
At the time, the former president’s eldest son had not only started posting daily videos to Rumble, but he was also actively promoting it on other platforms.
In an early February tweet, for instance, Trump Jr. invited his followers to view his new content space.
“Free-speech is fundamentally American, yet because of Big Tech we are losing it rapidly,” he said in explaining his move to Rumble. “Algorithms designed to crush the voice of conservatives sounds more like China than America. Check out my video content on Rumble where a level playing field exists!”
Evidently, his father was listening.
The Well News attempted to reach a Trump representative on Saturday to ask about the new page, but was unsuccessful.
Trump’s event at the Lorain County Fairgrounds in Wellington, Ohio, about a half-hour southwest of Cleveland, marked his return to the kind of mass rallies that fueled his White House campaigns.
It comes just four days before he is scheduled to visit the U.S.-Mexico border on June 30 with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
A second rally is already planned for July 3 in Sarasota, Florida, and after that, the former president is set to do a short tour taking questions from former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly.
