Donald Trump has revealed he is considering starting his own social media company, saying that he doesn't care if he is allowed back on Twitter as it's become "very boring".
The Former US President spoke to conservative US media outlet Newsmax on Thursday (NZ time), in one of his first media appearances since handing over office to Joe Biden.
During the interview, Trump told anchor Greg Kelly that he was too popular for Twitter to handle.
"You know I had 89 million [followers] but that was because they held it back. And then on top of that, I had 36 million or 39 million on @POTUS [Twitter account] and we had other sites with millions and millions of people. So we had about as big as it gets and likewise on Facebook. And they all want that but a lot of the problem is mechanically they can't handle it because it's too many people, it's bigger than they are by many times."
Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter after the Capitol riots "due to the risk of further incitement of violence".
He attempted to get around the ban by using other accounts but has since given up.
Trump told Newsmax that since then, Twitter is nowhere near as exciting, and said his team "don't want to go back to Twitter". Instead, he was thinking of starting a rival company.
"I'll tell you it's not the same, if you look at what is going on with Twitter," he said. "I understand it's become very boring and millions of people are leaving because it's not the same and I can understand that. We'll see what happens. We're negotiating with a number of people and there's also the other option of building your own social [media company]. We were being really harassed on Twitter."
Trump and Kelly also discussed the potential of a second run for office, now that he has been acquitted of impeachment. However, Trump remained coy.
"We won't say yet but we have tremendous support and I'm looking at all numbers out which are through the roof- and my numbers are going up - I get impeached and my numbers go up. Let's say someone gets impeached, typically your numbers go down like a dead balloon, but the numbers are very good, very high, I think they are higher than they were at the election and they were high in the election.
The interview was one of several Trump made on Thursday (NZ time). He also spoke to Fox News where he remembered conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who was reported to have died after suffering from lung cancer.
"He had tremendous insight. He got it, he really got it."
