Trump’s Executive order aimed at social media may have been issued in a fit of pique, in part: to him, if he believes it, it is true, so any questioning (fact-checking, horrors!) has to be stopped.
The actual order, if enforced, could increase social media’s liability to what others post.
And it is an attempt to stop twitter/FB, etc. from fact-checking, since “the Republicans will never win another election” (to quote DJT), if they can’t cheat, lie, deny and mislead or misinform.
Trump probably knew that the media companies would jump all over him, as well as those “freedom of speech types,” but also hoped his “base” would love it (that’s the point, really). Furthermore, he probably knew that the lawsuits would probably stop him from actually carrying out his order, especially for the next six months, i.e. until after the November election.
But I bet El Jefe Trump and his gang-members will try to use it to intimidate the opposition—if they can.
The important thing is for both the social media and the opposition (Democrats, independents, the conscientious ) to refuse, on principle, to mince words, or proof, or facts.
And the science seems to say that, on the issue at hand—mail voting vs face-to-face voting—voter fraud has been extremely rare. And the one recent, confirmed mail fraud case was performed by a Republican contractor, “harvesting” and even completing, absentee ballots. Face to face fraud is mostly the voter suppression kind of fraud: intimidating the nervous (minority) voter to go home, instead of voting. One can infer that Trump, and his party, are all for that kind of fraud. Keep black and brown people from voting, then he and the Republicans could win.
Trump will do anything he can to prevent certain types of people from voting: cheating, misleading, lying: otherwise, as he stated: “Republicans will never win another election,”