Donald Trump is preparing for his return to Facebook and Twitter

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In a comeback for the White House, Donald Trump is looking to regain control of his powerful social media accounts.

By regaining access to his Twitter account, Trump’s campaign formally petitioned Facebook’s parent company to unblock his account there after it was locked in response to unrest at the US Capitol two years ago. .

We believe the ban on President Trumps Facebook account has significantly distorted and inhibited public discourse, the Trumps campaign wrote in its letter to Meta on Tuesday, according to a copy reviewed by NBC News.

Trumps campaign has not threatened a lawsuit, as some sources close to Trump thought he would. Instead it discussed the importance of free speech and petitioned Meta for a meeting to discuss President Trump’s immediate return to the platform.

A Meta spokeswoman declined to comment on Trump beyond saying the company will announce a decision in the coming weeks in accordance with the process we laid out.

Facebook and Twitter banned Trump a day after a mob of his supporters, many of whom admitted in federal court that they were stung by his lies about a stolen election, stormed the Capitol and interfered with Congress during it counts the electoral votes to prove Joe Bidens 2020 presidential victory.

Facebook ultimately decided to impose a limited ban on Trump that will come up for review after two years, starting on January 7 of this year.

Twitter planned a permanent ban, but new owner Elon Musk reinstated Trumps account in Nov. 19 and then criticized the company’s previous leadership for the ban.

Trump, however, has yet to tweet.

Trump will likely return to Twitter. It’s just a question of how and when, said one Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with Trump about returning to the platform. He’s been talking about it for weeks, but Trump speaks for Trump, so it’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do or say or when.

Another Trump confidante, who also did not want to be identified about the conversations with him, said Trump had sought input for weeks about returning to Twitter and that his campaign advisers had also workshopped idea for his first tweet.

Some advisers said Trump may be limited from posting on other social media platforms now that he has established his own, called Truth Social. Truth Social declined to comment on any alleged limitations, and a spokeswoman for Trump said the campaign believes the hell Twitter can get back to normal.

Another Trump adviser, who spoke with him about Facebook and shared the gist of the private conversation with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said his campaign believes Facebook will ultimately respect the two year ban and he will be reinstated but he is willing to engage. with House Republicans who control the lower chamber of Congress to advocate on Trumps behalf and pressure Meta. The adviser said Congress is likely to review Section 230 of the federal law affecting social media companies.

If Facebook wants to have this fight, fine, but the House will benefit, and keeping Trump out of Facebook looks political, the adviser said, noting that House Democrats like Adam Schiff of California are told Facebook last month to bar Trump from the platform.

Trump has continued to post damaging election content on Truth Social that likely violates Facebook’s rules, and we have every reason to believe he’ll bring similar conspiratorial rhetoric back to Facebook, given the opportunity, Schiff wrote in a letter to Meta signed by the three. Democratic colleague.

Trumps plan to expand his social media footprint also speaks to the limits of Truth Socials reach. Trump has slightly more than 4.8 million followers on the platform, compared to nearly 88 million on Twitter and 34 million on Facebook.

Twitter and Facebook are the one-two punch of Trumps pugilistic style of campaigning.

Facebook was crucial to Trump’s 2016 victory, when his campaign used computer programming to tailor ads to audience data called microtargeting that helped him raise money among small-dollar donors and out- message Democrat Hillary Clintons campaign. An internal Facebook report found that Trump ran 5.9 million different versions of the ads, compared to 66,000 for Clinton, according to Bloomberg News.

But then Facebook changed its rules including a limit on high volume advertising and the Trump campaign protested. An employee of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns who was not authorized to speak publicly said the changes limit the Trump organizations’ ability to use Facebook in the same way it did in 2016.

Twitter has been credited with enabling Trump’s political rise, but his freewheeling style has been seen as irrepressible even by many Republicans who have begun to oppose his use of Twitter.

In its report on the unrest in the Capitol, the House committee repeatedly noted on January 6 that Trump used Twitter to call out people in Washington, DC, by saying, Be there, will be wild! After his supporters sacked the Capitol, the report said, Trump initially refused to use his Twitter account to tell them to leave and instead criticized Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to help overturn the election, which further enraged the mob.

The next day, Twitter permanently banned Trump. Facebook also enforced its ban that day.

The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly show that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, criticizing Trump’s decision to use. his platform to convince rather than condemn the actions of his supporters in the Capitol building is rightly disturbing to people in the US and around the world.

We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect and probably their purpose was to provoke more violence, wrote Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg also pointed out that Trump has violated Facebook rules over the years but that Meta has responded by removing or labeling posts as violations, rather than banning him, because the public has right to the widest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. .

But the current context is fundamentally different now, involving the use of our platform to incite violent uprisings against a democratically elected government, he said.

Facebook then referred the ban to its independent Oversight Board, which upheld it but criticized the company for the openness of the suspension, calling it an indefinite and disproportionate punishment in a company statement released on May 5, 2021, by Metas president of global affairs, Nick Clegg. On June 4, Clegg announced a two-year temporary suspension.

At the end of this period, we will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has decreased, Clegg wrote at the time. We will examine external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other signs of civil unrest. If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a period of time and continue to reassess until that risk has decreased.

Trumps campaign noted that time was running out and, in its letter, quoted Clegg as saying in October that any private company should tread carefully when seeking, basically, to silence political voices.

We agree, the Trump campaign wrote in a letter addressed to Clegg, Zuckerberg and Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy.

We also believe that a continued ban would basically constitute, in Mr. Clegg’s words, a deliberate effort by a private company to silence Mr. Trump’s political voice, Trumps campaign wrote. Moreover, each day that President Trump’s political voice remains silent adds to the inappropriate interference in America’s political and electoral process.

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