#Donald Trump pledges to ‘restore’ free speech through media company

Former President Donald Trump is gearing up to unveil his new social media venture, saying the project will “challenge the dominance of the Big Tech giants” and will address the “corruption” of major tech platforms.

Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) is set to launch in beta for “invited guests” next month before coming online for all users in early 2022. The new company will “challenge the dominance of the Big Tech giants and Big media bosses,” Trump said in a statement, adding that “this is about saving our country.”

The former president noted that the United States is filled with people who are capable of thinking for themselves and he admires people who don’t go with the herd. He slammed “a small group of self-righteous scolds and self-appointed arbiters” for censoring Americans on social media — “the public square of our times.” 

The 45th president listed several examples of censorship, such as medical doctors being banned for contradicting other health authorities and the suppression of reporting about President Biden and his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.

“And as everyone knows, we’ve seen a sitting president of the United States effectively silenced by a small oligarchy of tech titans and ‘mainstream’ media corporations,” Trump said.

“The corruption of these platforms cannot be ignored. We have fallen far down the ‘slippery slope’ of censorship in our country, and the topics that Americans are increasingly forbidden to debate are among the most important issues of our day.”

Trump proceeded to call censorship and “cancel-culture” un-American, which has “direct, real-world consequences,” pointing to the chaotic troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the southern border crisis, and the ongoing Democratic spending debate. 

“In a country that had free speech and a free flow of information, none of this would ever have happened — and no one understands that better than the people doing the censoring,” the former president claimed. 

In the statement, Trump said that after reflecting on the problem of censorship, he realized it was up to him to “restore” free speech by introducing a new major platform for Americans of all political positions. He noted that such a platform would need to be well-funded and could be a multi-year undertaking. 

“It’s a tremendously difficult set of challenges — and I realized I might be the only person in America with the megaphone, the resources, the experience, and the desire to make it all happen. So with the same ‘can-do’ spirit that has always allowed Americans to persevere, that is exactly what I am doing,” Trump said. 

Trump then introduced a “Big Tent” platform called Truth Social, for people of “all political stripes.” 

“Unlike with the Big Tech platforms, there will be no shadow-banning, throttling, demonetizing, or messing with algorithms for political manipulation. We will not be treating users like lab rats for social experiments, or labeling alternative views as ‘disinformation.’ We will not silence our fellow citizens simply because they might be wrong — or worse, because we think that Americans ‘can’t handle the truth.’”

TMTG also plans to launch an on-demand video streaming service to combat “woke” and “politicized ‘entertainment’.” Trump revealed the company may also stretch its resources to web services and payment processing. 

“In the end, a small number of powerful people who all think the same and wish to silence anyone who thinks differently cannot be trusted to control almost every major media, technology, and entertainment company in America,” Trump concluded. “I am determined to break their chokehold over the voices of the American People — not just for myself and my own supporters, but for the United States of America!”

It has been speculated that Trump would attempt to enter the media landscape after he left the White House and was banned from Facebook and Twitter following the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol.

Earlier this year, he briefly experimented with a blog-style platform called “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” which enabled him to make posts that could be shared on Facebook and Twitter by others, but the platform shut down during the summer.