Donald Trump has made his return to Facebook after being banned in 2021, telling his followers on the social media platform "I'M BACK!".
The disgraced former president was taken off major social media platforms following a far right insurrection at Capitol Hill where he praised violent rioters after he lost to Joe Biden.
Meta, Facebook's parent company, made the decision to boot Trump off their platforms after he “praised people engaged in violence” and a number of other major platforms did too.
In his return, Trump posted tonight: “I’M BACK!” as he promoted his campaign for presidency as he intends to run again in 2024, just hours after he was let back onto YouTube.
In the video, a clip of Trump from 2016 on the night he was elected president is shown where he says: “Sorry to keep you waiting complicated business, complicated …”. The short clip then ends with a promotional image and slogan for his 2024 presidential campaign.
This all comes as a federal judge reportedly ruled Donald Trump's lawyer must testify before a jury in the ongoing investigation into the businessman and, earlier today, YouTube reinstated the businessman's channel following a similar two-year suspension.
When Meta ended Trump’s suspension on January 25 this year, former UK deputy Prime Minister turned Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said that new “guardrails” would be introduced to prevent repeat offending.
They justified the decision to let him back by adding: “The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box.
"But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there is a clear risk of real world harm — a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public discourse — we act."
He described the circumstances of Meta banning Trump, after the loudmouth ex-pres praised those attacking America’s democracy, as “extreme and highly unusual”.
Originally Trump's ban was open-ended but it was later set to two years from the date of the original suspension, January 7, 2021.
Speaking earlier today as the former president was let back onto YouTube, the company's vice president of public policy, Leslie Miller, said the 76-year-old “is no longer restricted" after the company had “carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, balancing that with the importance of preserving the opportunity for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election."
They added: “This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.”
After being similarly banned on Twitter, new owner Elon Musk ran a poll for his followers to decide if the former president's account should be reinstated.
Musk, whose time in charge of Twitter has hit the headlines on a number of occasions, then said: "The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox populi, vox dei."
He was let back onto Twitter almost a month before Facebook, but is yet to post there.
In his time off the social media giants, Trump has relied upon his own social network, Truth Social.
But now, seemingly in an attempt to bolster his upcoming second run for president, he has re-emerged on Facebook.
Trump has 34million followers on Facebook, 87.4million followers on Twitter, and 2.5million subscribers on YouTube.
Across his social media platforms, the posts where he incited violence remain up as he repeatedly claimed his loss to Joe Biden was a "rigged election".
A federal judge has reportedly ruled Donald Trump's lawyer must testify before a jury.
In making her ruling, the judge, Beryl A. Howell found that the government had met the threshold for the so-called crime-fraud exception, which lets prosecutors work around attorney-client privilege when advice could have been given in furtherance of a crime, the New York Times reported.
The ruling is a significant moment in the ongoing investigations in Trump's illegal retention of national security materials and obstruction of justice and it could lead to new revelations about his activities.
