Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, stopped Trump from joining fringe social media platforms Parler and Gab after he was banned from Twitter, according to a report from CNN.
Kushner and deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino are said to have gone against other aides, such as personnel chief Johnny McEntee, to get Trump not to join other social media platforms, an outside adviser and an administration official told CNN.
Trump has now been banned from most major social media platforms. His favorite social media platform, Twitter, suspended him Friday for peddling claims of election fraud.
Parler and Gab are platforms that have attracted some far-right users due to the companies’ lack of speech restrictions on their platforms. Gab and Parler are not available on Google Play or the Apple app store.
Trump attempted to use the @POTUS Twitter account on Friday after his ban to announce that he would be making his own social media platform before Twitter quickly took down the tweet.
Other Trump officials tried to give their Twitter accounts to Trump. His digital director Gary Coby changed his name to Donald Trump and tweeted that he would give Scavino the account password. Twitter suspended Coby’s account five minutes after the tweet.
Mainstream social media platforms and companies have distanced themselves from Trump since the attack on the Capitol last Wednesday. Trump has not tried to publicly talk about the election fraud conspiracy theories since the insurrection, but did say he will not attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next Wednesday.