• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 24, 2021

It’s one thing when you are the current president of the U.S., calling other elected officials in your party, and the opposition, jerks, pinheads and a-holes. But as an ex-president?

Reports says the former U.S. leader is starting his own social-media platform in two or three months, where he again hopes to deliver big-valued, ad-seeking messages.

Efforts have been pushed after he was permanently suspended in January from a number of social media platforms -- Twitter, Facebook and others -- for reasons that include “incitement of violence” in connection with the insurrection attack on the U.S. Capitol.

New social media words from the former President may offer a repeat performance, such as: “It’s going to be wild.” But will traditional media platforms now repeat such words, disparaging remarks and asides? Well, maybe if it’s entertainment and causes no real actions. Freedom of speech is still a thing.

Bigger question: Where’s the funding money coming from to support such a site? Former and current presidential supporters?

To combat faux efforts around widespread election fraud, the ex-President's supporters contributed around $200 million to pay legal bills and other stuff. Even so, how sustainable is this business plan?

And once it’s up and running, advertising is an obvious financial tool. Still, one has to wonder about starting a new social media platform that is smaller in scale than, say, Twitter or Snap.

By that account, how big is Parler these days, after Amazon pulled its cloud-computing Amazon Web Services technology from that platform? Parler resurfaced after this decision with a new technology backer. We don’t know the level of its monthly active users.

Looking at the bigger media picture, what has become of Newsmax, the traditional cable news TV network, which took some attention away from Fox News Channel’s particular brand of news/commentary coverage? Not much. Viewership dropped in February versus its sharp spike starting in November 2020.

But more importantly, what will the proposed new social media site be called? It's a Trumper stumper.