r/The_Donald was a subreddit where participants created discussions and internet memes in support of U.S. president Donald Trump. Initially created in June 2015 following the announcement of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, the community grew to over 790,000 subscribers who described themselves as "Patriots". The community was banned in June 2020 for violating Reddit rules on harassment and targeting. It was ranked as one of the most active communities on Reddit in the late 2010s.
Activities by members and moderators of the subreddit were controversial, and site-wide administrators took steps to prevent the subreddit from having popular content displayed on Reddit's r/all forum, which the company's motto describes as "the front page of the Internet". A quarantine of the subreddit was imposed in June 2019, which required users to click an opt-in button to view the subreddit and prevented the subreddit from appearing in Reddit's search results and recommendations. Additionally, ads could not be run on the message board and certain features such as custom CSS were not available. Moderators of r/The_Donald created a backup website outside of Reddit in response to the quarantine.
The subreddit had a lengthy documented history of hosting conspiracy theory content that was racist, misogynistic, and Islamophobic. On June 29, 2020, Reddit banned the subreddit for "frequent rule-breaking, antagonizing the company and other communities, and failing to meet our most basic expectations." After the subreddit was quarantined and placed in restricted mode in 2019, moderators of r/The_Donald created and moved to the site "TheDonald.win", and after President Joe Biden's inauguration, moved again to "Patriots.win" to continue supporting Donald Trump and a political party that he would allegedly create, the "Patriot Party".
History On June 27, 2015, shortly after Donald Trump announced his campaign for the presidency, the subreddit was created as a place for "following the news related to Donald Trump during his presidential run". The subreddit grew to be known for frequent posting of memes, especially Pepe the Frog, and frequent uses of slang terms such as "centipede" (a reference to a much-distributed Trump highlight reel featuring the Knife Party song "Centipede"), "MAGA", "nimble navigator", "no brakes", "cuck", "4D chess", and "SJW". Furthermore, users on the site referred to Trump as "God Emperor". For a period of time, the subreddit repeatedly posted an image of Hillary Clinton kissing Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. The image was accompanied by a photoshopped picture of an aged Byrd in Klan garb, which was meant to falsely portray Clinton and Byrd as Klan supporters. Byrd had severed ties with the Ku Klux Klan in 1952.
In April 2016, jcm267, the founder of the subreddit, attributed the popularity of the subreddit to moderator CisWhiteMaelstrom. jcm267 told MSNBC that CisWhiteMaelstrom told him "we'd have hundreds of thousands of readers there and I was very skeptical about that, not because I thought Trump can't win, because I think he's the only GOPer [Grand Old Partier] with 'landslide victory' potential, but because Reddit is not a conservative place". Subsequently, CisWhiteMaelstrom deleted his Reddit account. On June 12, 2016, the day of the Orlando nightclub shooting, moderators of the r/news subreddit began to remove many comments from its megathread pertaining to the shooting, leading to accusations of censorship. Due to deliberate manipulation by the forum's moderators and active users, the algorithm that dictated what content reached the r/all page of Reddit resulted in a significant portion of the page being r/The_Donald content. In response, Reddit administrators made changes to its algorithms on June 15, 2016, in an attempt to preserve the variety of r/all. Around this time, members of the then-recently quarantined white nationalist subreddit r/European began migrating to r/The_Donald, causing tensions with the userbase. In response, the moderators instituted several changes, such as banning off-topic discussions and purging lower-ranked moderators deemed inactive or unwilling to enforce the new rule. TrumpGal, who was appointed as CisWhiteMaelstrom's replacement, then stepped down, claiming that the users tried to dox her for these changes. As her replacements were accused of being too liberal and of instituting censorship, several users and the previously purged moderators moved to a new subreddit named r/Mr_Trump. In November 2016, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman reported that the moderators for r/The_Donald had changed "at least four times" due to the community revolting.
The subreddit hosted "Ask Me Anythings" (AMAs) of notable right-wing, conservative figures supportive of Trump including Scott Adams, Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, Helmut Norpoth, Curt Schilling, Peter Schweizer, Roger Stone, Milo Yiannopoulos, Tucker Carlson, and Corey Stewart. Furthermore, Trump himself hosted an AMA on the subreddit on July 27, 2016.
In September 2016, Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR, introduced a non-profit organization on r/The_Donald called "Nimble America" with the stated purpose of creating and spreading pro-Trump Internet memes through "Facebook ads, billboards, and 'website ops'". Luckey stated that he had donated $10,000 to the organization and offered to match contributions from r/The_Donald users for 48 hours after the announcement. Luckey later apologized for any negative impact his actions had on public perception of Oculus, and stated that he acted independently, not as a representative of Oculus VR.
The subreddit was also noted for investigating Clinton's leaked emails after their release by WikiLeaks. Their findings were subsequently reported by right-wing news media while WikiLeaks acknowledged the subreddit in a tweet. The subreddit also coordinated to vote on many online polls during the 2016 presidential debates.
The subreddit frequently attempted to manipulate Amazon.com's booklist via vote brigading, or encouraging subscribers to cast a certain review en masse. In November 2016, the subreddit was reportedly mobilizing readers to leave one-star reviews on Amazon.com for Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly's autobiography, Settle for More, in response to what users considered biased reporting from her. Amazon later removed many of the negative reviews. Later, in September 2017, the subreddit attempted to buy copies of Trump's Great Again: How To Fix Our Crippled America to outsell Hillary Clinton's then-upcoming book What Happened. However, their plan backfired when several users bought other Trump books instead such as Trump: The Art of the Deal while Clinton's book reached No. 1 on the site.
On November 22, 2016, the moderators of r/The_Donald announced that they were going to start removing posts about some conspiracy theories, such as the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory and a rumor that Julian Assange had disappeared, citing that such content was "drowning out thoughtful discussion or Trump-related content". The next day, CEO Steve Huffman admitted to editing the comments of r/The_Donald users by replacing his username (u/spez) within their comments insulting him with the usernames of r/The_Donald moderators instead. Huffman said of the change that "I had my fun with them, they had their fun with me, but we are not going to tolerate harassment for any others." One week later, Huffman apologized for his actions, and offered a filter feature to the website, allowing users to exclude subreddits from their r/all page. Starting in February 2017, the subreddit, along with other "narrowly-focused politically-related subreddits", was notably excluded from Reddit's updated homepage, r/popular.
In the beginning of January 2017, BuzzFeed published the Steele dossier, which alleged that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government. In response, members of the subreddit stated that the document was "fan fiction" sent to Republican political strategist Rick Wilson by members of the 4chan forum /pol/. Later that day, Republican senator John McCain confirmed that he had sent the dossier to FBI director James Comey several months earlier.
In July 2017, it was discovered that a congressional staffer for Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) asked for users on r/The_Donald to crowdsource information for a congressional amendment that would look into alleged misconduct on the parts of Hillary Clinton and James Comey. Gaetz confirmed the user was a staffer in an interview with Wired, stating that "it is the responsibility of our staff to gather as much information as possible when researching a subject and provide that information for consideration. We pride ourselves on seeking as much citizen input as possible."
On August 5, 2017, a post encouraging users to attend the Unite the Right rally, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia, was stickied by r/The_Donald's moderators. The post was deleted some time on August 13, 2017, a day after the rally ended in the first-degree murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer and the injury of 19 others by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr.
Members of the subreddit maintained a Discord server called "Centipede Central", which peaked at 16,000 active users in October 2017 and was among the largest servers on Discord. The server was criticized for leaking personal information of anti-Trump activists, which caused The_Donald to sever ties with the group. The server was eventually shut down in a coup in October 2017, which scattered its members to smaller communities.
In January 2018, former Senior Counselor Steve Bannon's statements regarding Trump were published in Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury". After Trump himself criticized Bannon's comments, many individuals on the subreddit turned against Bannon. The negative comments were subsequently covered by Vanity Fair and Independent Journal Review.
After the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, users of r/The_Donald posted messages to the subreddit that justified the shooting and violence against Muslims. In response, a Reddit spokesperson stated that Reddit had strengthened its hate speech and violence policies over the last several years. When asked about users from r/The_Donald posting in the r/newzealand subreddit after the attack, the moderators of r/newzealand noted that the users often employ dog-whistle verbiage, making it difficult to discern which content posted should have action taken against it.
Quarantine, restriction, and ban On June 26, 2019, the subreddit was quarantined by Reddit admins due to excessive reports, threatening public figures associated with the 2019 Oregon Senate Republican walkouts, and an over-reliance on the site admins to personally moderate the subreddit. The quarantine added a warning portal, removed revenue opportunities, removed the subreddit from feeds and search, and removed custom CSS styling.
In November 2019, the subreddit's moderators attempted to evade Reddit's imposed quarantine by reviving and promoting a subreddit called r/Mr_Trump. This subreddit was banned by Reddit's administrators in accordance with its policy that "attempting to evade bans or other restrictions imposed on communities is not allowed on Reddit." Days later, Reddit's admins warned the subreddit's moderators about trying to out the alleged White House whistleblower in the Trump–Ukraine scandal in violation of Reddit's rules on harassment and inviting vigilantism.