Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner stopped an effort to sign up the president on fringe social media platforms such as Gab and Parler after Twitter suspended his account last week, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, also objected, two of the people said. The two men thought the alternative social media sites, which have catered to political conservatives by promising fewer restraints on speech, weren’t suitable for the U.S. president partly because they didn’t think they were well managed or could handle the traffic.
Kushner told other White House officials including Trump’s director of personnel, John McEntee, that the president’s social media presence should not migrate to the fringe sites. Trump could have overruled him and moved to the new sites himself, but with Scavino’s discouragement he did not, the people said.
They asked not to be identified because the conversations were private. CNN reported earlier that Kushner had stopped the migration of Trump’s social media accounts to new services.
Opening a Parler account, at least, wouldn’t have done the president much good. Apple Inc. and Google booted the service from their app stores over the weekend, and Amazon Inc. cut it off from its cloud services, after Parler was accused of allowing Trump supporters to plot further violence.
Parler has sued Amazon to have its cloud services restored.