Rachel Maddow had a lot of fun Wednesday night mocking the downfall of Donald Trump’s blog. “You hate to see it. Very sad. Very sad,” she said while breaking down how the ill-fated not-a-platform failed largely because no one wanted to read what the disgraced ex-president had to day.
Trump shut down “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” blog, according to CNN because he was furious about miniscule readership. And yeah, we bet. When the blog was launched less than a month ago, Trump’s spokesman Jason Miller promised it would accrue “tens of millions” of users. While it’s unclear how many daily visitors the site had, it’s definitely far, far under the millions. Traffic on Trump’s campaign website DonaldJTrump.com slumped a whopping 99% over the last year according to Comscore.
And a Washington Post analysis makes it even clearer how much the Internet doesn’t care; social engagement around Trump (including likes, reactions, comments or shares on content about him across four social media sites) plunged 95% since January, the lowest it’s been since 2016.
So with all of that in mind, Maddow opened her June 2 show with a video clip released May 4, when the “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” blog first launched. She said she’d been aware of the blog’s existence from the start, of course, but somehow missed the roughly 30-second ad the Trump team created to promote it. The ad, which cracked Maddow up, promised that the blog would be a place to “speak freely and safely.”
“They called it the beacon of freedom. This is the thing that I knew existed. (But) I had no idea they launched with this like short film,” Maddow said.
“The blog’s prospects had not improved since even though Trump had taken to writing on it more,” Maddow said, quoting the Post’s analysis piece.
“He’s excluded from all social media and his blog failed, his effort to change the game (and) to completely redefine the game with his own platform that would have tens of millions of viewers. It failed and it didn’t last a month.” Maddow continued. “You hate to see it. Very sad. Very sad…”
Maddow also noted that the video — which you can see above — features a strange CGI zoom from space onto Mar-a-Lago and is kind of reminiscent of a missile being launched.
“First of all, the idea of something being from the desk of someone, and that thing also being a fast moving enough thing that it requires photography from space in order to show it, that’s kind of a weird mixed message because what’s like that that comes from a desk?” Maddow asked.
Then Maddow brought up the glaring irony of the message of Trump’s blog. “Yes, he used to be president, but now he’s at his house in Florida, arising a beacon of freedom straight from his desk, where you can speak freely and safely — or maybe where he can speak freely and safely, since it’s his own desk, and nobody else actually gets to speak there,” Maddow said.
As Maddow noted, this is unlikely to be the last we see of the Trump clan online even though Trump can no longer use his beloved Twitter account. Trump’s promised he’ll launch his own social media network sometime soon — and as Maddow put it, “we’re watching that to see what the fury releases there.”
Watch the clip above.