11 ms·
Twitter suspends Trump's campaign account TeamTrump for violating its rules
- rasengan 6y agoWe all know this has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with pizzagate.
- save_ferris 6y agoMost of the discussion seems to be centered around freedom of speech and enabling dissenting voices, no matter how violent, but I think we're missing the bigger picture here. This represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well. edit: imagine trying to run for re-election without a social media presence. It's hard to imagine that anyone could mount a serious campaign without it, let alone win.
- afavour 6y agoI actually think that Trump, of all people, is the worst to try to make that case with. At the click of his fingers he’ll have cameras from every major news network and reporters from every newspaper in a room to listen to what he says. Inevitably whatever he does say will be on Twitter instantly. Not that it matters that much because the majority of the country aren’t even on Twitter. They read about his tweets in news reports. I don’t buy that Twitter is a source of power for Trump. It is his communication medium of choice, certainly. But his power has always been in making controversial statements that generate headlines. He doesn’t need Twitter for that.
- lr4444lr 6y agoI dunno. I think this is precisely an example of why hard cases can make good laws - not that were making laws here yet, but the OP definitely brings up a good point about the general matter.
- Laforet 6y agoAlex Jones got deplatformed a while ago and somehow he's still on the news every other week. I'm sure the current POTUS will just do fine.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoSomething really weird happened with Donald Trump. He had a tendency to say things like "I got twice as many votes as Obama did when he was reelected." (I don't think he actually said that one, but it's hard to find a real example when... they deleted his twitter account.) And then that isn't true. Trump got ~74M, in 2012 Obama got ~66M, that's not twice as much. But it's more. So if they run the story correcting it, they're running a story that tells people that Trump in 2020 got more votes than Obama did when he won in 2012. At some point the media got tired of this, but what are they supposed to do about it? If they don't correct it, the claim stands unopposed. If they do, they're still running the story Trump really wanted, telling people he got more votes than Obama. They eventually started omitting the context. So then the headline becomes "Trump lies that he got twice as many votes as Obama" and then that's the entire story. No mention of how many there actually were. But that didn't work, because then the first comment on the story is from some Trump supporter providing the actual numbers and you're back to having a story about Trump lying that still benefits Trump. So then they want to do something about the Trump supporters because they keep providing the inconvenient context that Trump's controversy generator left there on purpose. So they censor them in some way. But then the supporters feel wronged -- being punished for saying something true -- so they support Trump even harder and it backfires. The whole thing made them so angry that they're now willing to cross every line in order to destroy him. But the current strategy seems to be to censor him as much as possible so that nobody sees the rebuttal to the rebuttal because nobody sees the rebuttal because nobody sees the original claim. Which might actually work to destroy Trump, but only by destroying a structural pillar of the democratic process at the same time. And anybody who thinks that such a weapon, once used, will only be used once, is delusional.
- sroussey 6y agoDisagree that presidential power should bleed into private companies. He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side.
- save_ferris 6y ago> He entered into a contract with Twitter, broke it, and Twitter ended things on their side. I agree, and I'm not saying that Twitter acted in the wrong here. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. That's a pretty significant lever to have over POTUS. That's the point I'm trying to make here.
- omarchowdhury 6y ago> Imagine a hypothetical scenario where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something under penalty of deplatforming. The threat would be a criminal offense.
- geomark 6y agoThreatening to deplatform is a criminal offense? What a world we live in.
- omarchowdhury 6y agoNo, coercion of the POTUS is the criminal offense. > where Dorsey threatens a president to say or not say something
- salawat 6y agoOut of curiosity, what do you think makes it illegal: the coercive aspect, or that it's aimed at POTUS?
- 6y ago
- poulsbohemian 6y ago>strips Trump of a major source of power for him I think you are trying to make a reasoned argument and engage in meaningful debate, but can we really make the argument that the person with the nuclear codes, in control of a budget of trillions of dollars, receives any power from a free online publishing tool?
- omarchowdhury 6y agoRight, it's more of a convenience.
- the_drunkard 6y ago> receives any power from a free online publishing tool i respectfully disagree. imagine FDR without his radio fireside chats, JFK without his television appearances, or even Trump without Twitter. the usage of media platforms and ability to communicate directly with constituents is a source of power.
- daniellarusso 6y agoSo, the first two examples are one-way broadcast mediums using the public airwaves. If you had said HBO and Sirius radio, I would agree.
- poulsbohemian 6y agoAs I noted, you realize the federal government has a nearly inexhaustible source of funding, right? I bet they could build a twitter clone if they were really worried about it.
- rsynnott 6y agoTo some extent, it’s a problem Trump brought upon himself by relying so much on social media. If Twitter had banned Obama, well, people would barely have noticed, really. Most politicians just aren’t dependent on social media in the same way Trump is, and are generally much better behaved on it. And what’s the alternative? Force them to provide service to every crazy person?
- alisonkisk 6y agoHe's the President. If he published somewhere else, such as his own government funded website, people would read him there.
- Retric 6y agoI sincerely doubt that Twitter actually significantly enhances presidential power. Unlike normal people presidents can get on national TV to directly communicate with the general public. He’s got plenty of ways to message millions of people like mass email, or even just sending a letter to news agencies etc. Twitter was useful politically, but it probably hurt as much as it helped. Further the president can literally call in air strikes or offer blanket pardons etc. They are often called the most powerful men in the world for good reason.
- Ericson2314 6y agoIt's a good point, but the the solution is anti-trust and open standards, not presidential perks.
- zoobab 6y agoantitrust never worked.
- eganist 6y ago> This represents a vast check on presidential power that exists purely in the hands of these incredibly wealthy and powerful social media executives. I don't necessarily disagree with Twitter's decision given the events of the last few days, but this undeniably strips Trump of a major source of power for him, and that merits a discussion of the role that private social media companies play in our discourse and presidential function as well. This is the fourth estate in everything but name. It doesn't have the same protections as the press, but it's no different than it was decades or even centuries ago, when media moguls could focus the heat.
- userbinator 6y agoIt's not just social media but Big Tech in general - Google is pretty much the only way the majority people look for information on the Internet, so I'd say it has an even larger amount of power in influencing what people see.
- zoobab 6y agoJack Dorsey knows the future lies within uncensorable social networks. Guess what he has in mind with blockchain and al. If we would have kept all the tweets as 144 chars as text only, a full copy of all tweets would have been possible through a compressed distributed blockchain. Time to reboot social networks folks!
- geofft 6y agoThe ability to use Twitter (or the newspaper) is not a presidential power. Certainly it is true that it is hard to run a campaign without a media presence. That has been true for hundreds of years. Competent candidates have entire teams, if not the vast majority of their campaign, figuring out how to effectively contract with private media entities (whose freedom is protected by the First Amendment) to get their message out. That incompetent candidates exist is not a reason to change this system.
- kumarvvr 6y agoDoes presidential power come from social media? Presidents should not use social media, in my view. They have too much power and too much reach. A simple TV broadcast should be good enough.
- sg47 6y agoHe has been using the platform for a long time and spreading all kinds of misinformation but Twitter did not take any action against him in the past. The platforms are available for anyone to behave in a civil manner and not cause unrest in the country.
- systemvoltage 6y agoPresidents and all officials should quit Twitter and use official channels for communication. We've stooped so low that the entire world has one communication channel for politicians: Twitter.
- thr_120 6y agoThere are lot of comments like: 'I do not support him but...'. I'm not from the US so will use example from my country. I do not mind if my prime minister was banned from Facebook even though I'm ok with him (didn't vote for him, but we have more than two parties).Facebook is just some private company for me. It is monopoly in a way and pain that most of my social circle is locked there. But for any public figure? There is public broadcaster. It already is not good that he is not using his PR team that much. You have put too much power in to the hands of private companies. Public broadcaster can be (and often is) misused for propaganda of ruling government. But so can be private one (and often is). But at least there is stil this balance of public/private spaces. But I know this is irrelevant in the USA which tries to implement some utopias (like free speech) but others are considered as immanentization of the eschaton.
- pineapple_rice 6y agoSo today we had: * Reddit ban a number of pro trump subreddits (details at reddit.com/r/reclassified) * Twitter permanently bans Trump and a number of other influential conservative accounts * Discord has banned the donald win discord * Google banned Parler from the Play Store * Apple is strongly considering to do the same This will go down as a very important day in American Internet history. A very important week in American history. I can only wonder what the next two weeks will have in store.
- kumarvvr 6y agoImportant to remember, these companies did this not from an outpouring of ethical or moral considerations, but because the next president will not tolerate them. Edit: To be clear, I support the bans and would have loved to see them earlier. I am not lamenting them.
- alisonkisk 6y agoCan you share any evidence of that?
- kumarvvr 6y agoIsn't it obvious. There are a number of time trump violated the terms and conditions of various platforms with his content. There are numerous instances where activists have pointed out glaring breach of T&C, nothing was ever done, because it was good for business
- billylindeman 6y agoAnd everyone cheers it on. :(
- maxerickson 6y agoAren't there 75 million people that are very upset about it? (I mostly think it's hilarious that he's slowly rounded up from 74 million)
- nsoonhui 6y agoA dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25695741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25695741
- codq 6y agoNope, this story is about the post-main account ban game of whack-a-troll.
- 1MachineElf 6y agoWeird how the old one got flagged. Is there a reason why this shouldn't be discussed on HN?
- bmarquez 6y agoThe old one was a duplicate of an earlier post.
- ztratar 6y agoMakes sense. They just set a policy and he immediately attempted a workaround. Let's have the free speech discussions debated through representatives. I can agree that violence should be removed by platforms immediately, and that "Stop the Steal" did promote just that.
- app4soft 6y agoHere is better explained article on "The Washington Post".[0] P.S. He is also removed from Mastodon[1] too: > The page you were looking for doesn't exist here anymore. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/08/twitter-trump-dorsey/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/08/twitter... [1] https://mastodon.social/@realDonaldTrump https://mastodon.social/@realDonaldTrump
- erichocean 6y agoWhen Biden moves to the White House, he should remove Trump's Presidential portrait from the wall. Completely unperson the guy, like he never existed.
- gamblor956 6y agoThat is only done for Presidents that are removed via the impeachment process. As a result, it has never actually happened. (While several presidents have been impeached in the House, the latter half of the process has never been successfully sustained in the Senate.)
- erichocean 6y agoSurely we can make an exception when a President leads an insurrection against his own country…
- pseudalopex 6y agoWhy not impeach and remove him?
- HelloFellowDevs 6y agoCan't have someone actively avoiding a ban tweet from your handle. Oh well the game of whack-a-mole for Twitter continues!
- jsheard 6y agoIt looks like he also tried to requisition a staffers personal account, getting them suspended too https://twitter.com/JDiamond1/status/1347741119434649603 https://twitter.com/JDiamond1/status/1347741119434649603
- 30minAdayHN 6y agoI wonder if it's another policy violating tweet that lead to ban or the past tweets put in light of the new events. Waiting to know more.
- maxerickson 6y agoTheir policy is that you can't evade a ban using other accounts.
- scrollaway 6y agoThey were just reposting the president's banned tweets.
- loraa 6y agoIt's time to take back freedom and smash the shit out of it.
- scrollaway 6y agoSomething that isn't being talked about anymore: Trump chose twitter. He chose to stay on it, to use his personal account, to use it as his primary method of communication. US presidents have the biggest, loudest loudspeakers available at their fingertips. Obama's administration had a whole protocol about how to use Twitter as one of their official comms medium and not have it be a de facto one. Biden is so far following it. Trump brought this on himself. (And btw, you can believe this, AND believe the ban is a good thing, AND believe twitter and media companies have too much power. These things are consistent)
- umvi 6y agoYeah, Trump should have used whitehouse.gov to share his thoughts, and if people want to follow they can use a whitehouse.gov RSS feed or whatever.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoIt's illegal to delete the official public record. That's why he stuck to his personal account.
- scrollaway 6y agoSomehow, most other elected officials manage just fine. Trump had even more potential reach. He chose to put all this power in Twitter's hands. Y'all should be thankful this failed authoritarian was so incompetent.
- kumarvvr 6y agoYup. I blame Twitter too. They are too greedy. Just when their platform was receiving flak for not being profitable, trump comes on and they let him on because it was good business. Now that he is out of power, revenue from his enabling dwindles fast and criticism increases, so the business decision is to ban him.
- sk5t 6y agoThis is a very naive take. Millions of Trumpers still want to engage with him on Twitter. The business equation hasn't changed.
- btmiller 6y agoFrankly yes. A tolerant society does not tolerate intolerance.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoA tolerant society that doesn't "tolerate intolerance" (your words) is an intolerant society. We are heading toward authoritarianism.
- rzz3 6y agoThere’s a south park episode about this :)
- alisonkisk 6y agoSee "Paradox of tolerance" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- pineapple_rice 6y agoReposting from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696132 The paradox of tolerance is one of the weirdest concepts I see being quoted everywhere that absolutely makes no sense to me. It seems so obviously inherently flawed. ________________________________ Who defines intolerance? Historically that's the people in power. In the 50's that was the US government and powerful people like CIA Director J Edgar Hoover and Senator Joseph McCarthy who used their power to root out leftists, branding them as communists. They said free america could not tolerate the intolerant leftists because socialism and communists were inherently intolerant. The USSR did this by sending people who questioned party agenda straight to the gulags. "By going against party thinking, these people are pushing for an intolerant society that is stratified with the class structures of old. We need to get rid of them before they ruin our perfect tolerant society." The same logic is used to try to stamp out Muslims in countries like India right now and other places in the world historically. "If we leave the intolerant Muslims around, they'll bring forth Jihad and enforce Sharia law on everyone. The Koran is very intolerant about how non-muslims should be treated, we need to force them out because their intolerance is a threat to tolerance everywhere." Literally every Christian country post-Martin Luther in the middle ages used that logic to wage wars on other Christian countries. Not just Christian vs. Christian of course. It's why countries in the past fought against each other over religion so much. When intolerance is defined as views that I don't agree with, it becomes kill or be killed world. One of the best features of the enlightenment thinking is the concept of tolerance. One of the fundamental principles of Western thought. It's literally the reason why non-Christians can live in formerly Christian countries without being persecuted. It's why we accept people thinking about other government types other than an absolute monarchy.
- nalekberov 6y agoI will never understand why small amount of tech companies should decide who goes into public who not.
- koolba 6y agoBecause we let them.
- nalekberov 6y agoWho are you to let this happen may i ask, if that's "you", who are the rest? and why the rest should bend into status-quo?
- elliekelly 6y agoIn theory it’s “the free market” in action. If your ideas are good and people want to hear them then you’d be able to find a platform to disseminate those ideas to an eager audience.
- nalekberov 6y agolol "the free market". Which capitalist invented this word?
- zepto 6y agoThey don’t. Anyone can post anything on their own website. In Trump’s case he can call a press conference.
- rvz 6y ago> They don’t. Anyone can post anything on their own website. Anyone but Trump or the banned-wagon. If Trump hosts a website on GoDaddy or any other hosting service, it will be removed immediately. > In Trump’s case he can call a press conference. Depends where it can be streamed. Given he's just been de-platformed from most streaming services for the general folk. CSPAN perhaps? Sure the media will do it but they can't help but edit it after it has been streamed.
- zoobab 6y agoTime for Trump to ratify the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace: "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather." https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence Oh shit EFF just approved censorship.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mullingitover 6y agoIt's going to be exhausting watching people explain how the First Amendment works, ad nauseam, over the next few days.
- mmastrac 6y agoTo explain and completely misunderstand how it works, as well.
- DonHopkins 6y agoAnd the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
- ng12 6y agoRather a conflating of the concept of free speech with the First Amendment.
- kortilla 6y agoIt’s going to be exhausting hearing people explain how censorship is cool because it’s not the government doing it.
- tjr225 6y agoThat’s exactly how it is intended to work. Twitter doesn’t owe me or even the president anything.
- mullingitover 6y agoYou're entitled to free speech, you're not entitled to someone else's platform. Stormfront has been an openly racist community forum, spouting hate speech unimpeded for 24 years. Their one weird trick: they're not relying on someone else's platform to do it.
- nr2x 6y agoYup, and they had their own little shitty corner of the Internet until social media showed up and let them out. Time to send the trolls back to the caves.
- courtf 6y agoI love the image of Twitter admins chasing Trump around the platform like trying to get rid of some ornery teenage troll. Next he'll be logging into Ivanka's account.
- leptoniscool 6y agoThe First Amendment applies ONLY to the government: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. There's no legal reason a private company cannot manage its content?
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoOne could argue these companies are extensions of the government when they collude with the NSA to illegally spy on Americans.
- sk5t 6y agoThat doesn't sound like a good-faith argument to me. Is Boeing the government also? AT&T? Did Chrysler become the government during the WW2 supply push?
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoIf the government uses their monetary ties, or forces a company with threats of legal (or executive) action to suppress free speech, I believe that is a violation of the 1st amendment.
- pqhwan 6y agoAre you stating that as an unrelated hypothetical, or are you claiming that Trump forced Twitter to censor himself?
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoI am stating a general principal. If Twitter made the decision based on government pressure, it would be because of influence by the upcoming administration. I have not seen evidence to this effect.
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoIs anyone concerned by the coordinated efforts of Facebook Google, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and Apple today? If these groups and individuals that were banned were violating the TOS before, why did they leave them in place for so long? How do these companies decide when to enforce their rules, since obviously it's not immediately? And do they make deals with one another (I'll ban someone you don't like if you ban someone I don't like)?
- burnthrow 6y agoOkay, hear me out... maybe, just maybe, it's not a conspiracy, and you're the crazy one for not understanding basic common sense. Maybe.
- dang 6y agoPlease stop posting flamewar comments to HN and taking threads further into hell. You've been doing it a lot lately, and it's exactly the opposite of what this site is supposed to be for. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of which politics they approve of or oppose. I'm not going to ban you because you've also been posting some good comments. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit, we'd be grateful. The rules apply regardless of how wrong other people are or how badly they behave. The commons is fragile, especially right now, and we need community members to contribute to protecting it, not destroying it.
- burnthrow 6y ago> taking threads further into hell Okay, you win, that's a good point. Tbh "don't take conversations further into hell" sounds like an excellent additional guideline, even if it can be read between the lines.
- dang 6y agoThanks for the suggestion. I'm using the hell metaphor increasingly—not for the happiest of reasons of course. What people need to remember is that hell has circles, and as bad as the current situation is, the inner circles are considerably worse.
- awnird 6y agoIf you ever wanted the spirit of the old internet to come back, then you can't get much closer than an a troll frantically using alt accounts to evade a ban.
- jonny383 6y agoWelcome to the next chapter in our globally connected "society". In other news, Orwell's "1984" is currently Amazons #7 best seller [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books
- curiousllama 6y agoFun fact Orwell was a really aggressive socialist
- kristofferR 6y agoThe storming of the Capitol was another 9/11 type of event, we are now in the same climate that lead to the Patriot Act, war, torture and countless other abuses. People are cheering on the bans without thinking further of the massive negative consequences this slippery slope will likely lead to. Glenn Greenwald did an excellent interview yesterday where he explained exactly why acting hastily after traumatic events and rage is so damn short sighted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVS9tfNyjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMVS9tfNyjc
- DonHopkins 6y agoThe 9/11 event was Trump being president during the Corona virus pandemic. His incompetence has been killing more people every day than the number of people killed on 9/11, for quite some time now.
- kristofferR 6y agoThat's not an argument, I agree that Trump and terrorism is bad. That is not an argument for enacting policies in a collective fit of rage without thinking at all about long-term consequences.
- web007 6y agoTrump being deplatformed from Twitter is long, long overdue. They had to rewrite their content policies to give him a loophole a long time ago, since any normal person would be banned for what he said. They recently started having to add disclaimers, because even the loophole wasn't enough to counter his wrongness and influence.
- apta_ 6y agoWhy don't they ban people like https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur%20Chu_1.jpg https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pdevr 6y agoQuestion not directly related to this event, but triggered by this: Has any of the countries around the world built a communication mechanism to directly reach its people without using any third-party platforms? Isn't this a must, in case external/foreign malicious actors forcibly take control of the major third-party platforms used in a country someday in future?
- scrollaway 6y agoSure, most countries have such systems, multiple different ones in fact, not all necessarily using the internet. They're usually used for emergencies only though. Redundancy is key if you're warding against foreign interference, nuclear events and the like. But at the end of the day if you're a free democracy you let people use whatever they want for the day to day stuff and you end up having to use those platforms to reach your citizens as well. My country tried doing its own thing a couple decades ago. It's called the minitel. Look it up if you haven't heard of it, it's pretty neat :)
- delecti 6y agoDo state media platforms count? FDR had his radio broadcasts, the UK has the BBC, various countries have emergency broadcast systems. In any case, it's certainly not something a government would find difficult if they found a need, it's probably just too much more convenient to have media companies handle most of the time.
- vimax 6y agoHow long before Trump starts sending emergency alert texts?
- thr_120 6y agoWhat I think more common is that head of the state is not a priori directly broadcasting through account on private page. What is quite common is public broadcaster.
- Imnimo 6y agoHonest question: Are people who are upset about this upset because they believe that Twitter should never ban anyone, or are they upset because they believe Trump has not violated any of Twitter's policies, or are they upset because they believe that Trump should not be banned even if he violates Twitter's policies?
- salawat 6y agoI'm a bit of a hard liner against banning anyone. I may not care much for some of the stupid or horrific crap people say, but I'll put my life on the line for their right to say it unimpeded. What other people do with that, and what happens in return is above my paygrade... I'm also generally pretty careful about what I do say as a result. Sometimes at least. I have my asshat moments, I'm sad to say.
- kypro 6y agoRemember when people said "it's only extremists like Alex Jones" and "white nationalists", yeah well now Twitter has banned the president of the United States. I'm not a supporter of Trump, but I'm yet to hear him explicitly incite violence. I know he encouraged the protest at the Capitol but I've yet to see evidence that he was hoping for it to turn violent? And if he did want that why did he speak out against it? He's also repeatedly said there will be a peaceful transfer of power. Am I missing something here? I've been told I can be quite a naive person so perhaps I'm taking him at face value too much. Either way, I'd appreciate if someone could help me put my thinking right on this. Also, does this mean we can expect Biden to be removed from Twitter if tweets anything in support of BLM? I'm not comparing events here but both protest groups have had pockets of violence. I suspect he wouldn't be and that points to a bigger problem here. If you think the wrong things like the election was conducted unfairly or you disagree with lockdowns, too bad, big tech will silence you online. If you believe conspiracy theories about Russian election interference or write a book called "in defence of looting" you're fine, you might even find you'll get praise from people in the media.
- iron0013 6y ago>Remember when people said "it's only extremists like Alex Jones" and "white nationalists", yeah well now Twitter has banned the president of the United States. The president of the United States is in fact an extremist like Alex Jones and a white nationalist.
- kypro 6y agoAgain, I want to be clear here that my defence of Trump isn't because I support him, I don't. That said, I don't know how he can be an extremist given he received such huge support from the American public twice. He's called both a populist and an extremist, which seems - at least to me - to be an oxymoron. I guess I also don't know why I should think he's a white nationalist? Could you expand on why you think that?
- iron0013 6y agolol nope smug folded hands pursed lips internet guy