Last updated on August 14th, 2020 at 07:54 pm
Appearing on Geraldo Rivera’s radio show earlier today on WTAM in Cleveland, President Donald Trump insisted he is being unfairly censored by Twitter and Facebook after the social media companies blocked a video shared by accounts linked to him and his campaign for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.
“They’re doing anybody, on the right, anybody, any Republican, any conservative Republican is censored and look at the horrible things they say on the left,” Trump said about the video in question, in which he could be heard saying that children “don’t have a problem, they just don’t have a problem” and advocated for schools to reopen amidst the pandemic. “It doesn’t have an impact on them. I’ve watched some doctors say they’re totally immune.” he later adds. These statements go against the advice against medical experts who’ve advised not to reopen schools at all.
“Every doctor is saying what I’m saying — not every doctor, I guess, there’ll be some that won’t,” Trump said on Rivera’s show.
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The @TeamTrump account was allowed to resume posting after the video appeared to have been taken down. The president’s own Twitter account was not affected because the clip was retweeted from the Trump campaign’s feed and not uploaded directly.
In May, the president courted controversy for threatening to shut down social media platforms after Twitter, his communication tool of choice, began fact-checking his tweets. The president suggested that social media “totally silences” conservative voices.
In 2018, the president claimed that Twitter is “SHADOW BANNING prominent Republicans” in response to a news story that alleged accounts owned by Republicans were showing up in a general search of the website but not automatically populating when typing their names in the drop-down bar. Twitter later issued a response, attributing the issue to a platform bug.
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.
