Donald Trump criticized social media companies after Facebook banned a number of far-right and other extremist figures, declaring that he was “monitoring and watching, closely!!”
The president, who at the weekend tweeted and retweeted complaints, including complaints from rightwing figures themselves, said he would “monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms”.
Meanwhile, a Democratic party politician indicated on Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller may be one step closer to testifying in Washington, answering questions from the US Congress in a public hearing on his report, issued last month, into allegations of collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia, and obstruction of justice.
There is a “tentative date” of May 15 for Mueller to appear on Capitol Hill, Rhode Island congressman David Cicilline said on the Fox TV network on Sunday.
Mueller would be questioned about his almost two-year investigation and the subsequent controversial handling of the resulting report by the US attorney general, William Barr, who is widely-criticized as being pro-Trump.
On Saturday, as the Facebook row raged, Trump tweeted harsh criticism of mainstream news organizations such as the Washington Post and New York Times, while lashing out against social media platforms for banning the editors of a prominent American conspiracy theory website, Infowars.
Trump retweeted multiple tweets denouncing the social media bans from an Infowars editor, as well as a one from far-right activist Lauren Southern, who has been banned from entering the UK for being deemed “not conducive to the public good”.
Southern was part of a 2017 far-right expedition that hired a ship to attempt to interfere with operations to rescue refugees in the Mediterranean.
Trump has previously asserted that social media companies exhibit bias against conservatives, something the companies have rejected as untrue. His comments came after Facebook this week banned Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones and others, saying they violated its ban on “dangerous individuals”.
The company also removed far-right provocateurs Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist who staged an unsuccessful congressional bid in 2018, along with Jones’ site, Infowars.
Judd Legum, the founder of ThinkProgress, a news site based at the progressive thinktank the Center for American Progress, said on CNN on Sunday that: “Trump is doing this because he needs people to believe that Facebook is biased against him.”
The president previously professed that leading social media platforms such as Facebook and the search engine Google have an anti-conservative bias.
But Legum posited that Trump also don’t want Facebook to crack down on misleading content, such as Infowars touting conspiracy theories, when his own 2020 election campaign team is likely to use misleading content in its electioneering.
Kmele Foster, co-host of the podcast The Fifth Column, said Facebook should not be “coerced” into banning controversial users.
“Speech can be dangerous but it’s more dangerous to engage in censorship,” he said.
The latest bans apply both to Facebook’s main service and to Instagram and extend to fan pages and other related accounts.
Trump appeared on Infowars in 2015, during his Republican presidential primary campaign, and praised Alex Jones. “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down,” he said.
Facebook’s move signaled renewed effort by the social media giant to remove people and groups promoting objectionable material such as hate, racism and antisemitism.
The company said it has “always banned” people or groups that proclaim a violent or hateful mission or are engaged in acts of hate or violence, regardless of political ideology.
On Twitter, Trump cited a number of individuals he said were being unfairly treated by social media companies, including Infowars’ UK editor, Paul Joseph Watson, and the actor James Woods. He insisted it was “getting worse and worse for Conservatives on social media!”
Woods, one of Hollywood’s most outspoken conservatives, has had his Twitter account locked. Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough said Woods will need to delete a tweet that violated the platform’s rules before he can be reinstated.
Several media outlets reported that the tweet that violated Twitter’s rules referenced the Mueller report and included the phrase “#HangThemAll”.
Trump tweeted: “How can it be possible that James Woods (and many others), a strong but responsible Conservative Voice, is banned from Twitter? Social Media & Fake News Media, together with their partner, the Democrat Party, have no idea the problems they are causing for themselves. VERY UNFAIR!”
Rosborough said Twitter enforces its rules “impartially for all users, regardless of their background or political affiliation”.
Trump, who uses Twitter extensively to push his message, recently met with Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, at the White House after attacking the company and complaining that it was not treating him well because he was a Republican. He later described it as a “great meeting”.
Trump had more than social media on his mind Saturday. He also tweeted that he was holding out hopes for a deal with North Korea on its nuclear program, as well as improved relations with Russia, now that he feels the special counsel’s investigation is behind him.