Donald Trump generally has less executive time on weekends—tee times come earlier than the start of Trump’s ‘business’ day—but Trump started early on Saturday by whining that social media sites are “totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices.” This follows the removal of hate-site InfoWars and its founder, Alex Jones, from most sites, and a temporary suspension from Twitter. It’s not the first time that Trump has made claims that social media sites filter more right-leaning posts, despite consistent evidence that shows this isn’t true. In fact many sites, including Facebook, are much more likely to promote conservative news sites over more progressive information.
But Trump didn’t stop with whining. He also stated that “Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let [the supposed discrimination] happen.” Which would seem to imply that Trump intends to press for some sort of law or regulation that would prevent sites for blocking hate speech and calls to violence.
Trump confirmed this impression in follow-up tweets. He first repeats his claims that CNN and MSNBC are “fake news,” but then brags about how he generously “do(es) not ask that their sick behavior be removed.” Having taken a bow for not completely eliminating the First Amendment by exerting government control over all public speech, Trump then … insists on government control over all public speech. In a statement that’s a fair Twitter match to his post-Charlottesville “good people on both sides” statement, Trump declared that “good and bad” voices are being removed from social media, and again suggested that he would somehow take control of the situation to force sites to stop removing hate speech and calls for violence.
Trump: Let everyone participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!
It’s a demand not only that social media take no effort to filter its content, but another step in Trump’s ongoing effort to drag down all media. Because the only person who benefits from a media environment where it’s impossible to tell the difference between the truth and lies is someone who lies all the time.