>> Big news in the social media world.
It's finally happened.
Twitter has decided to permanently ban Donald Trump from its platform.
In fact, they announced this in a tweet that I'll share with you.
They claim that after a close review of recent tweets from Donald Trump's account and the
context around them, we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement
of violence.
And as you guys know, this comes following what happened earlier this week with Trump
supporters rioting in the Capitol.
They broke into the Capitol Building several times.
That led to a total of five people dying, one of them a DC Capitol police officer.
And then there were four riders who died as well including one woman who got shot within
the Capitol Building.
Which was an absolutely hideous thing that happened in this country.
So Trump has put out all sorts of statements that have incited violence throughout his
first term.
So it's not shocking to me that he was continuing to do it even after Twitter had decided to
suspend him earlier this week.
But after that suspension, he was back on Twitter and I don't know what he tweeted out
specifically that led to this decision.
But they decided that no, now we're gonna do a, they said permanent suspension, which
is kind of a conflicting statement.
It's a ban, a permanent ban.
Suspension is different.
But anyway, he's gone from Twitter forever, based on what they're saying.
What do you guys make of this?
>> Very impressive.
>> Well, I think this is obviously kind of a logical conclusion for Twitter to go ahead
and come to at this point.
They've been teasing it out for weeks.
We've all seen it that, don't worry, as soon as he's not president, he loses the world
leader status, we can totally ban him.
They knew they were gonna have to do it, but then I think after what happened this week,
then they saw Facebook and Instagram go ahead and do the same thing.
They thought, okay, well now we're behind the curve.
We've got to do this because everybody else is doing it.
We don't wanna look like the only people still giving him a platform.
So I feel like they feel like this was definitely something they had to do.
Especially because we're already seeing these people, these pro Trump protesters are already
talking about more events.
I guess you could call them for lack of a better term.
So we know more it's not die.
Right, exactly.
That's the best way to say it, more attacks.
So we know they wanna do more and Twitter finally said look, enough's enough.
We put our own rule in place that we couldn't ban him.
Let's go ahead and not follow our own rule and I think they did the right thing.
>> It is interesting that Twitter was the last social media platform to ban Trump, in
that Facebook and Instagram had done it prior to Twitter making the decision.
Because I felt like in terms of fact checking Donald Trump's deceptions, Twitter was a little
more willing to do it as opposed to Facebook.
So it is kinda shocking that he's been banned from all these platforms.
But Fredrick, let me go to you because one question that I have, I mean, I wanna celebrate
of course because he's been such a terrible, motivating factor behind some of the horrible
events that have happened in this country.
Not just over this past week, but obviously the beginning of his presidency started with
the Charlottesville.
Hate marchers saying the Jews will not replace us.
Are you at all worried that this could have unintended consequences like censorship for
other people on these social media platforms?
>> No, I'm not worried about that at all, frankly because I think that the suspension
is daily and dollar short, right?
This is something that people have been asking for, as you said since Charlottesville and
before.
The reality is this, you brought up the fact that Twitter was the last major social media
outlet to do this.
Let's be honest, the reason for that is that it's his primary source of communication,
right?
He has 88 million followers.
And at the end of the day, Twitter has shareholders and, whether it's good people or bad people,
quote and quote.
There are still people using the platform.
So I do think that for those of us on the other side of things, this is something to
celebrate, but there needs to be accountability.
And I don't worry about the Donald Trump's and the Trump juniors and Ben Shapiro's of
the world, having their accounts suspended, frankly.
>> Yeah, I think you make a good point by mentioning some of the more provocative right
wingers, who don't really cross that boundary.
Or at least, I haven't noticed them cross that boundary too often where they start inciting
violence.
They just have a provocative opinions and I certainly think that those opinions while
I wholeheartedly disagree with them, and I find them a pourraient.
I don't think that they should be censored on these platforms.
I think inciting violence, for me at least, is a very specific thing that you should at
least have a discussion about when you're considering banning someone from one of these
platforms.
I've pretty much been against censorship on these platforms with the exception of Alex
Jones and I explained my reasoning behind that.
He did incite violence.
He was directing his audience members to go after the Posner family who had lost a son
during the Sandy Hook shooting massacre.
And so, with his allegations of false flag operations, and all of that stuff, his unhinged
fans decided to harass this family to the point where they had to move seven different
times.
They had all sorts of terrifying voicemail messages and threats against them.
And so they were terrorized by his supporters.
And I thought, look, this is this is an extreme case where it makes sense to D platformed
someone.
And really, Donald Trump is no different.
Donald Trump does incite violence.
He encourages his supporters.
In fact, the very day that the right wing extremist decided to break into the Capitol
Building and rain terror on anyone in there.
They were encouraged by Donald Trump.
He had a rally and towards the end of the rally, he encouraged them to march to the
Capitol.
And he didn't say specifically do what you did, but he speaks in a language that makes
it pretty clear that he wants them to get physical.
To force their way into getting what they want on behalf of what he wants.
And I think that's incredibly dangerous.
We've already experiences so many incidents involving his incitement.
>> Now, I agree with you 100%.
And I also, I have a question here too.
How long is it gonna be now until he issues the executive order trying to get rid of the
Section 230 protections, now that he's so ticked off at all of these social media outlets
here?
And the funny thing about that is that that's actually going to hurt these conservative
folks a lot more.
And yet they've all said, we've got to do this.
We've got to take away these protections, but these protections are actually their protections.
That's what allows them to say the crazy things without getting banned left and right.
Because when you take away those protections, suddenly Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whoever
it is, they face the full liability for everything that gets posted on their site.
And it will result, I believe, if he gets rid of 230, in widespread censorship of everybody
left and right.
That's where that would head just because they have to play it safe and who knows how
far it would extend?
Would it go to YouTube?
Would it go to these other video platforms too?
So that's a slippery slope.
That's the slippery slope, to be honest and a dangerous angry Trump could easily do something
like that.
>> Well, the good news about Cection 230 and let me be clear Section 230 has its own issues
and flaws, that's for sure.
And members of both parties have wanted to reform Section 230 because it just provides
too much of a liability shield for these social media platforms.
However, these social media platforms realize that members of both parties were looking
to reform this policy.
And so what they did while Donald Trump was renegotiating NAFTA or what he now refers
to as USMCA, was they ensured that Section 230 was baked into that trade deal.
And that's really important because the United States unilaterally cannot just repeal Section
230.
It's very likely that you would have to get other countries involved.
The social media outlets could easily file a lawsuit against the US government for doing
it unilaterally.
David Dayen from the American Prospect did a fantastic job outlining the details of that
in June, by the way of 2020.
So well before Trump was calling for Section 230 to be repealed.
So I don't think that Trump is gonna be able to do that through executive order.
So I guess we're safe on that end.
And honestly, Trump is at his lowest.
I don't know if he has the ability to do anything at this point.
Lisa Murkowski is now the first republican whose on the record calling for Trump to resign.
And she says that if he does not resign she'll be leaving the Republican Party.
So that's some pretty big news as well.
We'll see how it all plays out, but this is big news.
I honestly did not expect this to happen, but we'll give you guys more details as we
learn more.