During his tenure, the former Donald Trump benefited repeatedly from both the presidency and his business. No wonder then that Trump has also tried to profit from the far-right Twitter imitator Parler. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.
“The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-President Donald Trump to make Parler their primary social network, but there was one condition: participation in return for joining,” reveals a recent report from Buzzfeed News. Talks reportedly started last summer and resumed after Trump lost the 2020 election.
Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company so that Trump could join, with the idea that it would ultimately challenge both Twitter and Facebook if Trump promised to deliver its content to one there four hours before it was posted other place to publish. At a meeting in June 2020 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort in Floria, Parler’s former CEO John Matze and shareholders Dan Bongino and Jeffrey Wernick met with Trump’s former campaign manager, accused grifter and spouse molester Brad Parscale, and Trump campaign attorney Alex Cannon.
Here are the details of the deal:
“Upon conclusion of this agreement, half of that stake would have been transferred immediately to the Trump Organization, while the other half would have been split over the 24-month period of the agreement. Parler also asked Trump to link to Parler when posting on other social media sites or emailing his supporters and allow the company to use his email lists to promote its platform. In addition, Parler wanted Trump to introduce potential investors or advertisers. “
Surprisingly, “the White House attorney’s office soon shut down, said a person with knowledge of the discussions and decided that such a deal while Trump was president would be against the code of ethics,” reports Buzzfeed.
After the attempted coup in the US Capitol on January 6, the talks broke up completely. After the coup attempt, Amazon, Apple and Google Parler withdrew from their services because the social network had become a breeding ground for rights threatened with violence and rioting.
Parler has remained offline since then. This week, Matze was fired from the company’s board of directors as CEO and also robbed of his severance pay and equity. Matze claims he was booted because he wanted the so-called “free speech” network to introduce content moderation and ban accounts for right-wing extremists, despite the company claiming its claim was inaccurate.
In addition to taking in far-right conspiracy theorists and bigots, Parler has had problems posting child pornography on its network, though the company refuses to do so too.
The Trump family and the Trump organization, run by his sons, have made repeated international deals that benefited from Trump’s position as president, according to Vox, CBS News, Politico, the Los Angeles Times and other publications.
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