Donald Trump’s former spokesman Jason Miller is front and center behind a new social platform called GETTR, which claims to be an alternative to Big Tech social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. It’s also being financed in part by a fugitive Chinese billionaire with ties to Steve Bannon.
Miller confirmed to the Daily Beast that initial funding for Gettr came from a family foundation owned by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui.
“Some of the initial seed money has come from his family foundation.”
Miller added that Guo isn’t a direct investor in Gettr, doesn’t have a seat on its board or other formal role, and that the company has a number of other international backers.
The Gettr platform, incidentally, has an interface design that is remarkably similar to Twitter. The app went live on the Google and Apple app stores in mid-June, with the most recent update happening on Wednesday. A number of people have signed up for it, but one notable person who hasn’t, is Trump himself. And according to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs he won’t be joining anytime soon.
That news is a bit of a surprise, given that Miller has been one of Trump’s most loyal aides.
And it’s no secret Trump has been desperately trying for months to find another venue that lets him engage with his base online. He’s been unable to do so with any type of success since he was banned from Twitter and suspended from Facebook after helping incite the crowd that went on a deadly rampage at the Capitol on January 6. His short-lived blog attracted little traffic.
Much like his poorly worded, spelling-challenged statements “By Donald J. Trump,” the launch of Gettr sparked an inspired round of Twitter snarkery.
Some online sleuths even determined that one of the “popular users” Gettr spotlights on its home page isn’t actually a user.
Some of the barbs were aimed directly at Miller, who has been accused of going to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying court-ordered child support payments.
One user noticed that Gettr’s similarities to Twitter even appear to have it copying the number of followers some people have.
Then there’s this winning tweet by Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri:
