Donald Trump might have his Twitter account back, but the presidential hopeful still desperately wants to get back on Facebook—which will no doubt be key to running a successful campaign and fundraising operation for his 2024 bid. In a Wednesday interview, Trump told Fox News that his campaign is “talking to” Facebook, which indefinitely suspended his account shortly after January 6, in an effort to have the ban lifted.
“It has been considered a major business mistake for them, Twitter, and others,” said Trump, who dubiously blamed Facebook’s recent financial struggles on the decision to ban him. “If they took us back, it would help them greatly, and that’s okay with me, but they need us more than we need them.” The remarks came one day after the Trump campaign reportedly sent a letter to parent company Meta asking that Trump’s access be restored.
While Twitter might have been Trump’s most powerful tool for garnering media impressions—given the obsessiveness with which reporters and news outlets covered his every tweet during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns—it was Facebook that became his digital-fundraising workhorse in the latter election. So if Meta were to reverse course, Trump could begin rebuilding a fundraising network rooted in the various Facebook pages he has grown over the years.
In its letter to Meta this week, Trump’s campaign wrote that the two-year Facebook suspension—which “dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse”—had expired. Meta, which only committed to revisiting the suspension—not definitively lifting it—plans to “announce a decision in the coming weeks,” according to NBC News.
In November, Twitter became the first major social media platform to invite Trump back after Elon Musk held a Twitter poll about reinstating his account. However, Trump has shown no interest in tweeting again, as doing so would jeopardize Truth Social, a Twitter clone that Trump helped launch following his ban. Posts that Trump would tweet in the past are now shared exclusively on Truth Social, where he has 4.8 million followers.
