The left is absolutely desperate for Twitter to ban President Donald Trump.
At least 120 leftists on Twitter have called for Trump to be permanently removed from the platform following the Jan. 6 unrest at the U.S. Capitol Building. The list includes figures in media, Big Tech and leftist nonprofits.
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor tweeted: “we just had a violent coup at the capitol WTF is wrong with @Twitter - why is Trump not banned??” Rubin’s Twitter bio now reads: “NeverTrump, pro-democracy opinion writer at @WashingtonPost.”
Many more joined in to the anti-Trump rhetoric. David Levvitt, who writes for CBS, Yahoo, and several other publications, tweeted: “Twitter Safety is doing more for our country than Capitol Security, but they still haven't done enough. DELETE HIS ACCOUNT[.]”
Sarah Kate Ellis, the President and CEO of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), argued, “For the safety of our country and democracy, this @Facebook @Instagram ban needs to be permanent. As the global LGBTQ media advocacy organization, GLAAD is calling on @jack @Twitter to also ban President Trump permanently before he puts more people in danger.”
Former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao couldn’t resist joining in the call. “This is on Twitter and @jack. In November, @laura and I told them to do the right thing. They didn't. And here we are,” she said, linking to a letter she wrote in November 2020 begging Twitter to deplatform Trump. She then retweeted herself and added: “Just ban him already. Don't air his dangerous video during a coup where he says he loves the insurrectionists and lies about the election results. Do the right thing[.]”
Still others, including Molly Jong-Fast, editor-at-large of The Daily Beast, Keith Boykin, a CNN commentator and Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge called for Twitter to permanently ban Trump.
That goes against clearly established Twitter policies. Twitter claimed in a 2019 blog post that “We assess reported Tweets from world leaders against the Twitter Rules, which are designed to ensure people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely. The blog post went on to say: “[I]f a Tweet from a world leader does violate the Twitter Rules but there is a clear public interest value to keeping the Tweet on the service, we may place it behind a notice that provides context about the violation and allows people to click through should they wish to see the content.” However, “In other cases involving a world leader, we will err on the side of leaving the content up if there is a clear public interest in doing so.”
Twitter leftists have no qualms about calling for Trump’s censorship, but fell silent when Iran's Supreme Leader Imam Sayyid Ali Khamenei directed untoward statements at Israel and the Jewish people. Twitter did not even put a label on the Iran leader’s comments when he tweeted: “The elimination of the Zionist regime does not mean the massacre of the Jewish ppl. The ppl of Palestine should hold a referendum. Any political sys they vote for should govern in all of Palestine. The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime is firm, armed resistance."
Khamenei has also said, “The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous growth and a detriment to this region. It will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed. Then, the shame will fall on those who put their facilities at the service of normalization of relations with this regime.”
Facebook has declared that it will continue its suspension of Trump indefinitely, at least through the end of his term. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested in a post that Trump “intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell condemned the violence in Washington, D.C. “You can never countenance police being attacked. You cannot countenance our national capitol being breached like this. I think it is absolutely wrong,” he said in an interview with Liz McDonald on Fox News. Regardless of the violence that took place, restricting the speech of a sitting U.S. president certainly should not be the solution.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter at (415) 222-9670 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
MRC TechWatch Contributing Writer Alec Schemmel and MRC TechWatch Researcher Heather Moon contributed to this report.
