Former US president Donald Trump has lashed out at the Washington Post after claims his new website, From The Desk of Donald Trump, is failing.
Trump has been posting regular updates claiming to have amassed an audience of 36 million to his blog in the last month alone.
According to a May 22 Washington Post report, however, Trump's website attracted roughly 4 million visits in the week ending May 18 from desktop and mobile devices in the US - fewer than the pet-adoption service Petfinder and the food site Delish.
The website includes Trump's new blog, a fundraising page and online store.
According to the Post's review of data from four analytics companies, social engagement around Trump has plunged 95 per cent since January, to its lowest level since 2016.
His blog was shared to Facebook on average fewer than 2000 times a day in the week ending May 18.
Trump hit back at the Post's reporting in a lengthy blog post on May 24.
"We have not yet launched our own social media 'platform', but even the very basic site we have to post our statements has received 36.7 million views over the past month alone," Trump wrote.
Trump reinforced his stance against Twitter and Facebook after receiving life bans on both platforms, saying his website's traffic would be tracking better if he could promote it on regular channels.
"We're getting more traffic to our website now than in 2020, an Election year!" he wrote.
"This number would be even greater if we were still on Twitter and Facebook, but since Big Tech has illegally banned me, tens of millions of our supporters have stopped using these platforms because they've become 'boring' and nasty."
Since leaving office in a huff, Trump has been somewhat elusive, but the 74-year-old says his absence from mainstream channels is intentional.
"I have been doing very limited media so the American public could see just how big of a disaster the Biden Administration has been, and I was right," he wrote on his blog.
"Inflation, the Border Crisis, our forgotten Military, war in the Middle East, all as a result of Biden's mistakes. Our Country is being destroyed. Watch, it's only going to get worse!"