LOOPHOLE

Facebook Banned Trump, Then Earned $220K From His PAC’s Ads

Some of the messages even mimicked the language Trump used to inflame Jan. 6 rioters.

Facebook banned former President Donald Trump from its platform on June 7 for a minimum of two years for spreading disinformation that helped incite the violence of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. But over the past two months, Facebook has had no problem running some 2,000 ads from Trump’s Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, a joint venture between his Make America Great Again PAC and his Save America leadership PAC, bringing in as much as $220,000, according to reporting from Media Matters for America.

“Facebook has created another loophole for Trump, showing it cares more about making money than addressing issues on the platform that have serious consequences,” Media Matters associate research director Kayla Gogarty told The Daily Beast. The pro-Trump messages delivered between 5.3 and 8 million impressions, according to MMFA. “The PAC’s ads include ads promoting Trump’s rallies, attacking policies requiring children to wear masks in school, and attacking tech companies,” said an MMFA report published Thursday. “Some ads even echo the language Trump utilized in the lead-up to the January 6 Capitol attack, calling for people to “defend our elections” and claiming only Trump can ‘save our country.’”