66 Of Donald Trump’s Pre-Presidential YouTube Videos Have Been Made Private

As YouTubers gain experience and their skills evolve, they often make the early videos private, so that the cringe-worthy infancy of their channels is left unseen by viewers. Now, that strategy is so widespread that even the Head of State is doing it. As discovered by CNN, 66 videos hosted by Donald Trump before he became president have been made private.

The videos in question lived on the Trump Organization YouTube channel and were billed as updates “From The Desk Of Donald Trump.” Trump began hosting those vlogs in 2011, back when he was still the guy who harangued President Obama about his birth certificate, and he continued to provide regular updates for years after that. In total, his run of desk-side chats ran for 75 episodes, nine of which are still publicly available.

It’s not hard to imagine why Trump and his handlers might want to hide From The Desk of Donald Trump

from the public view. As CNN notes, Trump’s positions in those videos often contradicted his campaign rhetoric, and by making them private, the President has made it harder for people to pin down his previous political beliefs. The ones that have been allowed to remain up are, for the most part, pretty innocuous. In one, for example, Trump celebrates his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Trump has occasionally used YouTube as a platform on which he can promote his policies, though he infamously prefers Twitter as his social media site of choice. The Trump Organization channel, which houses the From The Desk videos, has uploaded only one new clip since the 2016 election.