Facebook’s Oversight Board today upheld 76-year-old former President Donald Trump’s ban on the popular social networking platform that includes Instagram, prompting an angry tirade from the former president.. Trump received the death penalty from Twitter Jan.8, three days after the Jan. 5 Capitol riot and mob scene that Democrats in Congress and some Republicans blamed on Trump. Google banned Trump from its YouTube platform, preventing him from using the world’s biggest Internet company from carrying any of Trump’s messages. After Trump’s ban on all social networks, Republicans called for stripping the social networks of its Feb. 8, 1996 Section 230 protections, enabling the platforms to disseminating content without fear of civil or criminal liability. Social networks get special legal immunity from third parties offended by social network’s content.
Whatever happened on Jan. 5, banning Trump from his use of social networks needs to be litigated in the federal courts, ending up in some definitive ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. As it stands now, Trump lost his vehicle for communication with this followers, whether they’re rabble-rousers or responsible citizens. “What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country,” Trump said in a statement, now limited to which media organization’s willing to disseminate it. Without Twitter, Facebook or Google, Trump’s been effectively silenced by today’s major communication channels. Trump can’t communicate with his followers after the ban. Jan. 5 Capitol riot was a game changer for social networks, watching the lunatic right wing fringe storm the Capitol. Trump’s claims of election fraud only fueled the lunatic fringe.
Whatever investigations were done on raud for the 2020 election, theyd weren’t significant enough to have changed the outcome. Trump’s Atty. Gen. Bill Barr said Dec. 1, 2020 that he saw no significant election fraud to overturn the election. But Barr didn’t take into account universal mail-in ballots where signatures couldn’t be verified. Election fraud expert and Chapman University law professor John Eastman, in preparing the election brief for Texas, said it was impossible to detect fraud with universal mail-in ballots. Trump finds himself in communication hell, robbed from getting his message out on the most popular U.S. social networks. Trump doesn’t realize that public is long over litigating the results of the 2020 election, accepting that obvious that he lost the election by nearly 7 million popular votes to 78-year-old President Joe Biden.
Going forward, Trump and the GOP have no recourse about the election, only litigating the right of social networks to ban him from using their platforms. Democrats have succeeded for now in taking over the House, Senate and Presidency, leaving only the federal courts to litigate anything Trump thinks violates his First Amendment rights and civil liberties. “Free Speech has been taken away from he President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger that ever before,” Trump said. Trump’s argument today goes over old ground, especially when it comes to the discretion of social networks to ban anyone they think violates their policies related to causing the public welfare. Jan. 5 was a game-changer watching the U.S. Capitol breached by right wing militia groups.
Whether Trump admits to or not, right wing militia groups back his candidacy, willing to commit any crimes in order to advance their agenda, in this case blocking Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote. Trump blamed 61-year-old former Vice President for not stopping the vote count and sending the tabulation back to the states. Trump knows that Pence had no authority other than presiding in titular way over the Congress certifying the Elector College votes. Claiming voter fraud was bad enough but blaming the former Vice President for not intervening on his behalf was an outrageous abuse of his office. When it comes to 2020 election, Trump needs to admit the abysmal failure of his former 32-year-old Communication Director Hope Hicks to confront the Democrat narrative that he botched the handling of the Covid-19 national crisis.
Instead of screaming about things already lost, the GOP needs to litigate against Facebook, Twitter and Google, claiming that Trump was denied his First Amendment Rights under Section 230, barring social networks from censoring content for whatever reason. “Break them up,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in response to what social networks have done to Trump. What makes Trump’s ban on social networks so egregious is that the mainstream U.S. press already robs him of a platform while they give themselves supreme power to attack his message, even where it’s proven as pure propaganda and disinformation when they colluded with Democrats to accuse him for four years of Russian collusion, If Democrats control the press and the social networks, the U.S. no longer has a First Amendment, becoming no different than its totalitarian adversaries.
