Donald Trump was reportedly in talks to acquire a 40 percent stake in Parler in exchange for the then president who agreed to be the first to post on the social media app that was the platform of choice for many of his supporters. has become.
The negotiations, which reportedly took place while Trump was still president, ended after White House lawyers objected, saying such a settlement would violate ethical rules and potentially expose him to bribery allegations.
News of the talks was first reported by BuzzFeed News, which received documents outlining the proposed deal.
According to BuzzFeed News, Trump’s company would have received a 20 percent stake immediately, while the remaining 20 percent would have been transferred in tranches over two years.
Donald Trump (seen above in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Jan. 20) was offered a 40 percent stake in social media app Parler, according to BuzzFeed News.
Parler sees itself as a social media platform that enables ‘free speech’.
The then president should have agreed to make Parler his primary means of communication with his supporters.
That meant Trump would have had to post all of his social media content – including posts, videos, and live streaming – on Parler for at least four hours before posting on any other platform, according to the proposal.
Parler also asked Trump to link back to the site when posting on the other social media platforms or when emailing his supporters.
Trump would also need to give Parler access to his email lists so the site could promote his platform to its many supporters.
Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager, came up with the idea of a Trump and Parler partnership in 2019
According to BuzzFeed News, Trump representatives were in talks with two of Parler’s stakeholders: Fox News commentator Dan Bongino (left) and investor Jeffrey Wernick (right)
According to the report, Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, was negotiating with executives from Parler on behalf of the then president when the idea first emerged.
Parler was represented in the talks by two of his prominent shareholders – Fox News commentator and Trump supporter Dan Bongino and Jeffrey Wernick, one of Parler’s first investors.
DailyMail.com has solicited comments from Parler and Bongino.
“ The president was never part of the discussions, ” former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told BuzzFeed News.
‘The discussions have never been so substantive.
And this was just one of many things the campaign explored to tackle Silicon Valley’s cancellation culture.
Wernick told BuzzFeed that Trump was never involved in any discussions about bringing him to Parler.
“We spoke to several people about possible interests in the company for producing certain things,” said Wernick.
He said nondisclosure agreements struck between Parler and the Trump organization prevent him from working out details of what was being discussed.
Legal experts quoted by BuzzFeed News said the reported arrangement could be illegal, as Trump would essentially receive financial reward from a company that received exclusive content while a sitting president.
After Trump lost his reelection bid in November, the two sides got back to the idea, but talks diverged after Parler was evicted by big tech giants like Apple, Google and Amazon, who accused it of not moderating extremist content.
Parler hoped Trump would help boost traffic by letting him post content on his platform before doing so on other social media apps.
Trump advisers thought Parler offered an alternative to mainstream apps like Facebook and Twitter, which have long been accused of anti-conservative bias.
While the outgoing president was negotiating with Parler, he used the other platforms to launch a public relations campaign to discredit President Joe Biden’s election victory.
Earlier this week, John Matze, CEO of Parler, said he was fired after a disagreement with one of the company’s main backers over its content moderation policy.
In the weeks following the November 3 election, Trump posted hundreds of posts claiming he had been the victim of widespread voter fraud that robbed him of victory.
Twitter and Facebook both posted disclaimers on its posts, raising suspicions that the companies wanted to censor the outgoing president.
On Jan. 6, Trump held a rally near the White House on the same day that Congress met to ratify Biden’s election victory.
After Trump spoke, hundreds of rally-goers stormed the Capitol, caught police off guard, and lawmakers frantically hid in fear for their lives.
Five people, including a Capitol police officer, were killed in the riots.
Amid the chaos and ensuing tension following the riots, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms banned Trump, saying there was a risk that he would use his accounts to fuel more violence.
In an instant, Trump was stripped of his primary means of communication with his 88 million Twitter followers and the more than 35 million people who followed him on Facebook.
After Trump was banned from mainstream apps, millions of users flocked to Parler, although this one too had struggled.
Parler, home to mostly far-right users who support Trump and in many cases applaud the riots, was removed from Apple and Google app stores.
It was also pulled from a web hosting platform by Amazon, making it inaccessible to users.
The big tech companies accused Parler of not working hard on extremist content and inciting violence.
Talks between the Trump organization reportedly cut short after Parler was removed from its cloud-based servers by Amazon Web Services
Parler disappeared from the internet last month with an error message ‘we can’t connect to the server’ after Amazon pulled the plug
Parler’s then-CEO, John Matze, 27, accused the big tech giants of censoring his platform.
Parler last month sued Amazon for violations of antitrust laws. It has also tried to get back online with the help of a Russian internet security company, DDos-Guard, but users have still not been able to post.
Earlier this week, Matze said he had been fired by the company’s board following a disagreement with Republican mega donor Rebekah Mercer, one of the app’s main funders who owns a majority stake.
Mercer has reportedly set up a team to run the site during Matze’s absence – including British lawyer Matthew Richardson and former tea party activist Mark Meckler.
Matze said on Wednesday that he and Mercer disagreed on whether Parler should do more to moderate extremist content on his platform.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Matze wanted to bolster the site’s moderation mechanism so it could return to the app stores operated by Google and Apple.
Matze said the company’s board disagreed with his proposal to ban certain groups affiliated with domestic terrorists.
Matze’s claim has been disputed by Amy Peikoff, Parler’s chief policy officer, who called his statements “ misleading. ”
“The company’s owners and managers have worked tirelessly to build a resilient, impartial platform dedicated to freedom of expression, civil discourse and user privacy,” she said in the statement.
The idea that Trump would co-own Parler was first raised by former Parscale.
Trump was removed from social media apps Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and others in the aftermath of the January 6 riot at the Capitol that killed five people
Trump’s ban on Twitter meant he could no longer communicate with his 88 million followers on the platform
Trump was also banned by Facebook, where the former president had more than 35 million followers
Parscale discussed the idea with Trump at a meeting at the White House last year, according to BuzzFeed News.
A Trump-Parler partnership intrigued Parscale, who first put forward the idea that the then president would create an account on the controversial platform.
In the days after Trump was encouraged by some of his assistants to set up accounts on Parler and another social media platform with fewer restrictions on hate content, Gab.
But he eventually decided to go against it after his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and another adviser, Dan Scavino, discouraged it, Bloomberg News reported.
Matze said that ultimately, Count Parler has some 15 million users on his site, including the former president’s two eldest sons, Eric and Don Jr, as well as many former White House staffers who served in the Trump administration.