Donald Trump was mocked on social media for closing his “From the Desk of Donald J Trump” blog after only a month.
Visitors to the former US president’s website on Wednesday found the blog redirected, or a 404error. Senior aide Jason Miller then confirmed to CNBC it would “not be returning”.
Mr Trump’s posts on the “blog” were added to a news feed — a month after it begun as a “place to speak freely and safely” following bans by Facebook and Twitter in the wake of Capitol insurrection.
David Frum, a senior editor of The Atlantic and former speechwriter for George W Bush, tweeted that it was “like something from Wordpress in the 00s”.
“Remember how Donald Trump was going to launch an amazing new social media platform to compete with Facebook and Twitter?,” wrote Mr Frum. “And remember how it ultimately turned out to be just a personal blog, like something from Wordpress in the 00s?”
Fred Wellman, the executive director of the Lincoln Project, added: “Honestly it's hard to keep up with the number of self owns with this moving clown show”.
As did Barack Obama’s former Long Island campaign chair, Jon Cooper, write that “Trump's blog has mercifully been put out of its misery.”
“He was hoping it would get him the same traction that Twitter did. It didn't. No one cared about the Trump blog and its traffic was dismal at best,” added Ameshia Cross, a political commentator and activist.
Hundreds of others also ridiculed Mr Trump, with a Twitter user writing: “I've had kidney stones that lasted longer than Trump’s blog...and they were more bearable”.
“It probably hurt his feelings that Petfinder had more hits than his blog,” added another user, after analysis by The Washington Post found Mr Trump’s blog with fewer visitors than Petfinder, a pet-adoption service, and recipe website Delish.
Interactions on social media also fell from a total of 159,000 on the first day of the blog, to 15,000 in the following days.
