Last Updated on May 27, 2020
President Donald Trump is threatening to heavily regulate or shut down social media companies after Twitter fact checked a tweet posted yesterday in which the president suggested mail in voting will create a massive uptick in voter fraud, and Twitter provided fact checking by CNN and The Washington Post claiming otherwise.
The president’s latest push against social media giants began on Tuesday, after he tweeted “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.”
“This will be a Rigged Election. No way,” added President Trump.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265255845358645254
Soon after posting these tweets, Twitter added a message under them that read, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” that linked to a page on Twitter titled “Trump makes unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud”
On that page, Twitter then links to stories by The Washington Post and CNN claiming to fact check the president, and insisting that mail in ballots do not increase fraud.
National File has exposed a series of examples of mail in voting being used for potential fraud, including the work of a citizen journalist in Texas who is blowing the whistle on what she believes to be a ballot harvesting operation taking place in nursing homes.
After this fact check by Twitter, President Trump posted another message, stating that “Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake NEws CNN and the Amazon Washington Post.”
“Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen,” added President Trump.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265427539008380928
Then, on Wednesday morning, President Trump continued to lambast big tech companies for what many users have considered to be political censorship that has happened over the course of years, starting with the president’s election.
“Republicans feel that the Social Media Platforms totally silence conservative voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016,” wrote President Trump.
“We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again,” added President Trump, before telling the social media platforms to “Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1265601615261827072
This is not the first time President Trump has discussed the issue of big tech censorship. After radio and TV host Alex Jones was infamously banned in 2018, President Trump spoke about censorship at one of his rallies, and promised to monitor the situation going forward.
https://www.facebook.com/791373644322801/videos/256008171909618/
Then, in May of 2019, after several prominent conservatives including Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, and Laura Loomer were banned by Facebook and Instagram, President Trump warned big tech companies that he is “continuing to monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS” at the hands of big tech social media platforms.
“This is the United States of America – and we have what’s known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH,” wrote President Trump. “We are monitoring and watching closely!”
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1124447302544965634?lang=en
President Trump continued monitoring the situation last summer, during his Social Media Summit, in which he invited a series of Twitter personalities to visit the White House to discuss matters of big tech censorship.
While the president excoriated big tech platforms during this summit, the administration has thus far remained inactive on the issue when it comes to executive orders or pushing Republicans in the House or Senate to seek protections for Americans on social media platforms.
