WASHINGTON (TIP): Back in March, after Donald Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter for inciting an insurrection, his spokesperson Jason Miller appeared on Fox News and declared the following: “We’re going to see President Trump returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform…this is something that I think will be the hottest ticket in social media, it’s going to completely redefine the game, and everybody is going to be waiting and watching to see what exactly President Trump does. But it will be his own platform…. I can’t go much further than what I was able to just share, but I can say that it will be big once he starts. There have been a lot of high-power meetings he’s been having at Mar-a-Lago with some teams of folks who have been coming in, and…it’s not just one company that’s approached the president, there have been numerous companies. But I think the president does know what direction he wants to head here, and this new platform is going to be big and everyone wants him, he’s gonna bring millions and millions, tens of millions of people to this new platform.”

With a big pitch like that, you might have expected the ex-president to unveil a social network that at least appeared to be more robust than a simple blog on his website but in fact, that’s exactly what Trump’s “return to social media” “with his own platform” entailed. It was called “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” and the reason we’re speaking of it in the past tense is because just a month after launching, the ex-president’s blog, where followers could find typically unhinged statements on his burgeoning legal problems, has been shut down. And not just shut down but scrubbed of old posts, depriving supporters of an archive to scroll through during particularly tough times, when they want to be reminded that “almost 75 million” people voted for him (yet he still lost the election).

Why the sudden departure? While it’s a difficult time for many a media company, according to The Washington Post, Trump closed up shop because so many people were, appropriately, making fun of it. Also, it had almost no readers:

Trump rolled out the blog last month after being absent from social media since January, but his effort to regain some of the attention he received with his headline-grabbing tweets largely failed. An adviser told The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey that the former president wanted to open a new “platform” and didn’t like that this platform was being mocked and had so few readers. The individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about Trump’s plans.

According to Washington Post analysis published last month, posts “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” as of mid-May, had been shared to Facebook “on average fewer than 2,000 times a day—a staggering drop from last year, when his Facebook page fielded tens of millions of comments, shares and other interactions every week.” In other words, his blog was a “stone-cold loser,” which you might have thought would translate to hate-clicks but apparently didn’t even do that.

Of course, ask Miller and this is simply a strategic repositioning and Trump is soon going to be huge again on the internet, or something. In a sad, bullshit statement, he told CNBC: “It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on. Hoping to have more information on the broader efforts soon, but I do not have a precise awareness of timing.”

As HuffPost noted in its eulogy, “‘From the Desk of Donald J. Trump’ was preceded in death” by many of its siblings: “Trump Airlines, Trump beverages, Trump: The Game, numerous Trump casinos, Trump magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump Steaks, a Trump travel website, Trump telecom, Trump University, and Trump Vodka.”

(Source: Vanity Fair)