AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File
- Trump was reportedly prepared to join Parler, the social-media site, if it banned his critics.
- Trump reps told Parler he could become an active user on Parler, per an excerpt from an upcoming Michael Wolff book.
- Parler, which is popular with the far-right, balked at the suggestion of banning Trump's critics, Wolff wrote.
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Former President Donald Trump was prepared to become an active user of social-media site Parler if it banned his critics – but it resisted doing so, according to an excerpt from an upcoming Michael Wolff book.
In an excerpt from "Donald Trump's January 6: The view from inside the Oval Office," published in New York Magazine on Monday, Wolff wrote that Trump's representatives approached Parler when Trump was in office, proposing that he join the platform once he left the White House.
Parler is a right-wing website that was popular with pro-Trump extremists around the time of the Capitol riots on January 6.
"They had floated a proposition that Trump, after he left office, become an active member of Parler, moving much of his social-media activity there from Twitter," Wolff wrote.
Under their proposal, Trump would receive 40% of Parler's gross revenues, and Parler "would ban anyone who spoke negatively about him," Wolff wrote.
"Parler was balking only at this last condition," he wrote.
The 40% figure has been previously reported.
Trump never became an active member of Parler. Twitter and Facebook blocked Trump after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, citing "the risk of further incitement of violence."
Insider has reached out to Parler for comment.
Trump considered joining Parler under the pseudonym "Person X," its former CEO, John Matze, said in a court filing in January. Matze, ousted as CEO earlier this year, said that Amazon Web Services (AWS) knew about these plans while it hosted Parler. It terminated its contract with Parler - essentially knocking the site offline - to prevent Trump from having any social media presence, Matze claimed.
At the time, Amazon said that "suspending Parler had nothing to do with politics." It suspended the site because Parler was "unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence," it said.
Parler came back online in February with a new web host and new CEO.
Parler became a platform for pro-Trump extremists to gather before and during the January 6 riots, in part because of its lack of content moderation. Following the riots, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores.