Former President Donald Trump has launched a new website that promotes himself heavily as a “magnificent” leader, failing to contextualize that ambitious claim with the numerous scandals, two impeachments, and hundreds of thousands of deaths from coronavirus that occurred under his tenure.
Trump’s site masks the difficulties he had in office while describing his supposed successes in positive ways. But many observers have noted that the site, viewable at 45office.com, appears to also be a vainglorious attempt at rewriting the history of the past four years.
“The Office of Donald J. Trump is committed to preserving the magnificent legacy of the Trump Administration, while at the same time advancing the America First agenda,” the site’s main landing page states, hinting that the former Republican will seek to continue influencing the U.S. political scene for some time to come.
News media across the web have panned the site as being one-sided and misleading. The Guardian published an article about the website with the headline: “Donald Trump uses new website to rewrite history of his presidency.”
The Guardian calls out the language Trump’s site uses, describing his actions and accomplishments that are listed as being “hyperbolic.”
Beyond omitting a number of his failures and follies, the Trump site also attempts to deflect blame as well. For example, while discussing his leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, the site makes it seem as though all responsibility for U.S. deaths rests solely with China.
“When the coronavirus plague arrived from China, afflicting every nation around the globe, President Trump acted early and decisively,” the site claims, disregarding the fact that Trump spent weeks falsely claiming the virus would go away on its own, and subsequently downplayed the seriousness of COVID-19 throughout the remainder of 2020.
More than 400,000 Americans died from the virus while Trump was in office. Numerous studies and former health officials that served within his office have contended that his inaction on the pandemic likely led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
The about section for the site, at just under 900 words, reads like a love letter of sorts for the former president — again highlighting his supposed accomplishments while neglecting to mention his failures or wrongly deflecting blame to others.
“President Trump never wavered in defense of our values, our families, our traditions, and our freedom,” the website claims.
However, Trump’s actions and statements as president often did run counter to many Americans’ families and values. He regularly engaged in racist rhetoric, including telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to their own countries before criticizing his governing style. Meanwhile, he sowed division and hatred of undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups.
Trump’s actions in his final months in office, too, were largely antithetical to the oft-observed peaceful transfer of power between administrations, as he engaged in pressure campaigns toward state officials throughout the U.S. to defy the will of voters after losing to now-President Joe Biden in last year’s presidential race. He also sought to disrupt the certification process of the Electoral College by encouraging his own vice president, Mike Pence, to reject the results, despite Pence not having the actual constitutional power to do so.
Trump’s new website, besides being a conceited attempt to spin his record, appears to also be an attempt to reestablish his online presence. The site “is part of Trump’s efforts to reconstruct his digital presence after essentially being deplatformed after January’s Capitol insurrection,” Axios’s Sara Fischer noted.
Trump has been banned from all of the major social media websites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, following his inciting statements on those platforms after a mob of his loyalists attacked the U.S. Capitol in January.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
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