Things are getting weird in the Trump camp.
First came the news that Facebook would be upholding their ban of the former president’s social media account for another two years and now, sources are claiming top advisers to Trump are having to “talk him off the ledge” when it comes to rumors that he thinks he’ll somehow retake the presidency from Joe Biden at some point this year. We know, that sentence is A LOT so we’ll break it down.
First, the social media exile: Trump had previously been banned by Facebook indefinitely after the site determined he’d encouraged and incited violence during the Jan. 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill. An Oversight Board was formed last month to go over Trump’s case and determine if the ban felt in line with Facebook’s policies. They upheld the decision and this week, Nick Clegg, VP of Global Affairs at Facebook, shared more details on Trump’s suspension while clarifying that the former president would be locked out of the platform for two years — the harshest penalty under the company’s new protocols aimed at ensuring free speech while keeping its community safe. Other sites like Twitter have permanently banned Trump, but this decision is still a big political blow for his camp, as some believed Facebook might be more lenient in their punishment. With Trump’s blog also shuttered, this means there aren’t really any social media platforms he can use to connect with his base.
Whether the Facebook ban is influencing Trump’s current mental spiral, we just don’t know, but according to CNN’s Jim Acosta, the MAGA messiah is having a really hard time fading into obscurity down at Mar-A-Lago. Acosta revealed that Trump is beginning to believe some truly disturbing conspiracy theories that posit he may be able to retake the presidency sometime this year.
“What he’s been doing over the last several weeks is reaching out to advisers and allies, and they basically have been trying to talk him off the ledge,” Acosta told “OutFront” anchor Erin Burnett on Friday morning’s show. “Trump has been asking, I’m told by one source, ‘What do you think of this theory?’ And what this one adviser told me is that he’s been told it’s not true.”
Acosta clarified that his source told him Trump probably doesn’t believe this plan to re-take the White House will work, but he’s so desperate to win back some of his political power that he’s still reaching out to people to see what can be done.
“Trump has listened to all kinds of things these days, and he is trying to grasp at straws to see if there is some way to get back into the White House. So it does seem that the former president is not letting this lie,” Acosta continued. “He’s reaching out to people, and people at this point are trying to talk him back into the real world, which is, of course, where he has not been residing lately, because he’s been believing in and investing in these far-fetched ideas.”
Yeah, that doesn’t sound like a person who should be in charge of anything.