“There is no excitement on Twitter anymore… it’s a very boring place”.

Or at least that’s what Donald Trump told Nigel Farage last week in a sit-down all-access interview on GB News.

The pair met face-to-face at Trump’s famed Florida residence Mar-A-Lago and discussed a range of issues, from the storming of the Capitol, to energy independence and Meghan Markle.

When the conversation turned to Twitter, however, it was clear the former president’s expulsion from the site still struck a nerve. Talking in the third person he said they were wrong for excluding  a “popular president” and suggested founder Jack Dorsey had been shown the door in part for letting cancel culture run rife on the platform.

But news out yesterday suggests the more bitter, the better when it comes to a new business drive.

Trump’s newly established media firm, the aptly named Trump Media & Technology Group, has reportedly attracted $1bn in investment ahead of its planned stock market listing.

The company plans to launch social media app, Truth Social, at the start of 2022 and says the funding sends an important message “that censorship and political discrimination must end” as they “fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech”.

The site is intended as a fresh platform to “restore” freedom of speech to conservatives, circumventing what they see as restraints and moderations targeting their political ideology.

After that, in a move reminiscent of the Murdochs, or perhaps the Roys for the Succession fans, Trump intends to launch a subscription video-on-demand service called TMTG+, which will feature a mix of news and entertainment shows. This is to be listed on Nasdaq.

This venture isn’t entirely unexpected. Since he left office, commentators have speculated that Trump was keen on creating a cable channel to rival Fox News. Perhaps in revenge for it recognising Biden as the 47^th president or perhaps just because of his love of empires.  

Whatever the motivation, it seems the plans for this project span further than originally imagined and are well underway.

For many people the events of the last two years feel blurred together under the all-encompassing cloud of covid. In that vein, it caught me by surprise that President Biden is fast approaching a year in office.

As you’d expect, political posturing is already underway for the 2022 midterms and recent polling suggests the Republicans have the largest lead in the run up to a set of midterm elections in 40 years.

We should eye the developments of a Trump media empire cautiously within this context.
 
A rising Republican party with a renewed vigour on extreme issues and Christmas cards covered in guns might well find solace, or space to grow, in an unregulated and angry new platform.