Then-White House director of communications Alyssa Farah speaks with reporters in Washington, DC, on October 21, 2020.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
“The View” cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin said Trump’s potential return to Twitter would hurt him.
“It’s going to remind voters of how unhinged he was, of how much drama he created,” she said.
Trump was banned from Twitter last year and for most of 2022 has been utilizing Truth Social.
Former White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin on Friday said that she believes it will be “only a matter of days” before former President Donald Trump returns to Twitter.
Her remarks come after the company’s sale to Tesla chief executive Elon Musk. But the former Trump aide warned that the ex-president’s presence on the social media platform would hurt him.
Farah Griffin — a press secretary to then-Vice President Mike Pence from 2017 to 2019 and the White House Director of Strategic Communications in 2020 — said on ABC’s “The View” that Trump’s vocal opinions on the far-reaching Twitter would contrast sharply to the limited scope that he has on Truth Social, which launched earlier this year.
“Social media has a way of bringing out the worst in humanity,” she said on the daytime television show, where she has served as a cohost since August. “There’s a lot of good stuff that’s come from social media, but people give in to their basic instincts when they’re hidden behind anonymity.”
Farah Griffin then opined that democracy has never been “stress tested” for the digital age, stating that the “closest” thing she could think of was the January 6, 2021 attack at the United States Capitol. And she noted that the former president once again making waves on Twitter would not be a good thing for him from her vantage point.
“I think it hurts him to be on Twitter,” she told the other panelists. “I don’t think his crazy statements get as much pickup on Truth Social as they did on Twitter. The past week he went after me on social media. No one noticed it — it was like if a tree falls in the woods.”
Trump earlier this week blasted Farah Griffin on Truth Social by saying that she wasn’t being honest, as she has been critical of the former president since leaving the administration in December 2020.
“Alyssa Farah totally misrepresented her true feelings about me and the Trump Administration in order to get her job at ratings disaster CNN, and a seat with the low IQ people at The View,” he said on the social media platform and in a statement issued by his Save America PAC.
“Look at what she said about me, and that doesn’t include the beautiful letter she sent and other statements she made. They should fire her for misrepresentation or fraud. Release the letter, Alyssa!” he added.
Farah Griffin then noted that Trump’s statements on Twitter would be perceived differently and would once again give voters another taste of the former president’s technology habits, which were often filled with political attacks and other incendiary comments.
“He’s going to have a way bigger platform, and it’s going to remind voters of how unhinged he was, of how much drama he created,” she said. “And it’s going to make Republicans have to answer for everything. It’s not good for the party or for him.”
After Trump headlined “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse where the then-president railed against the certification of now-President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory — which preceded the Capitol riot — he was permanently banned from Twitter.
Musk is expected to nix permanent bans on the platform, which would create an avenue for Trump’s potential return.
But the former president said earlier this year that he would continue to utilize Truth Social.