Trump says Twitter has become ‘very boring’ without him

Ex-president hits out at social media giant and hints he could start rival site of his own

Donald Trump has claimed that Twitter is no longer interesting and has lost millions of users since he was kicked off the platform last month in response to his role in inciting the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol.

Speaking to Newsmax host Greg Kelly by phone from his home in Palm Beach, Florida, the former president paid tribute to late conservative talk radio pundit Rush Limbaugh and teased a potential return to the presidential campaign trail in 2024.

Mr Trump then launched into an attack on mainstream social media, having lost his all-important megaphone following the events of 6 January, which also led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives, before his acquittal by the Senate.

“They really wanted me on Parler,” the ex-president said, alluding to a right-wing alternative to Twitter that has struggled to find a host since the riot, before pivoting to mourning his lost follower numbers.

“You know I had 89m – but that was because they held it back – and then on top of that I had 36m or 39m on @POTUS and we had other sites where we had millions and millions of people, so we have, I guess, about as big as it gets and likewise on Facebook and they all want that and part of the problem is, mechanically, they can’t handle it because it’s too many people, it’s bigger than they are by many times.

Mr Trump then set about disparaging Twitter, claiming without evidence that it was hemorrhaging users.

“And I’ll tell you it’s not the same. If you look at what’s going on with Twitter. I understand it’s become very boring and millions of people are leaving, they’re leaving it because it’s not the same and I can understand that,” he said.

On his future plans for relaunching his brand on social media, Mr Trump hinted that he could start his own platform – before returning to his pet grievance.

“We’ll see what happens. We’re negotiating with a number of people and there is also the other option of building your own… you can literally build your own site.

“But we were being really harassed on Twitter, they were putting all sorts of ‘flags’, I guess they call them. They were flagging almost anything you said. Everything I was saying was being flagged. It’s disgraceful.

“And yet you have other foreign countries saying the worst things possible and they don’t even talk about it. But it’s become very boring. We don’t want to go back to Twitter.”