Media will tell you that Donald J Trump has a lot of things working against him should he decide to take another tilt at the presidency: his age (he was born in 1946), his weight which posed additional risk when he contracted Covid-19 (but from which he appeared to emerge unscathed following treatment with dexamethasone, monoclonal antibody therapy and hydroxychloroquine); also, his mental stability was questioned and he was declared to have “grave emotional instability” in an open letter from US health professionals who said he was unfit for the presidency.
Trump proved his critics wrong. He appears to be healthy, hard-working, mentally astute and particularly good at handling tricky international relationships despite unabated media sabotage. Trump may be someone who not only survives, but thrives on adversity.
Social media giants took the opportunity provided by the January 6th altercations at the Capitol to oust their biggest critic from social media platforms.
“Twitter permanently banned Trump, citing the “risk of further incitement of violence” by his account, while Facebook indefinitely deplatformed the sitting president. After Facebook’s Oversight Board criticized the company for imposing an arbitrary punishment on Trump, the company clarified that Trump will remain deplatformed through Jan. 7, 2023, at least. Trump’s YouTube channel remains indefinitely suspended until there is no longer a “risk of incitement to violence.”
The Blaze
This week Trump said he would be the lead plaintiff in the class-action suit filed in partnership with the America First Policy Institute, a new nonprofit think-tank that advocates for Trump’s policies. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Is dealing to the very large obstacle of social media censorship clearing the way for Trump’s second tilt at the presidency?
Facebook is heady with the power generated by censoring social media comments they find politically disagreeable. We are about to find out whether the American legal system will protect Donald Trump’s freedom of speech, and, by inference, ours too.
Trump’s lawsuit includes legal action against the tech leaders’ personal liability for his bans.
Hannity went on to call out tech leaders, including Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, for banning President Trump all while allowing our nation’s foreign enemies to have a social media presence. “Guess who’s not banished? Well, look at this. The supreme leader of Iran,” he said. “That’s right. Ayatollah Khamenei. He frequently tweets about, death to America. Death to Israel. Often calls for the extermination of, quote, the Jews. He is the leader of the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism. @Jack at Twitter, I guess you’re happy to have him.”
“There’s something fundamentally wrong with a company that bans a duly elected president of the United States but gives it an enormous platform to America’s foreign enemies and other disreputable individuals,” Hannity continued. “As President Trump just stated, well, if the tech giants can censor of the president, then there’s nothing stopping them from doing it to you. As a matter of fact, they are.”
Fox News
Ardern is using the Christchurch Call to clamp down on social media posts that ostensibly promote terrorism and violent extremism. But Facebook and YouTube were the biggest offenders in spreading the live videos of Brenton Tarrant’s killings, which remained online for days after the event. Ten people watched it live and many more shared it afterwards. In true totalitarian fashion, it is not the big guys that get pinged, it is the little guys like you and me.
Facebook and YouTube are banning and plastering misinformation and false information warnings on posts with no connection to terrorism or violent extremism but which are critical of the government stance and statements about Covid-19 and the Pfizer vaccine.
This is nothing but hypocrisy from social media. Their censorship is more about controlling what people are allowed to talk about than preventing another terrorist massacre.
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