© Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images Senator Bernie Sanders isn't 'particularly comfortable' with Twitter banning former President Donald Trump when he was a sitting president. Sanders (I-VT) speaks during the confirmation hearing for Neera Tanden, nominee for Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), before the Senate Budget Committee on February 10 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former President Donald Trump have little they agree on, but when it comes to Trump being kicked off Twitter, the two seem to be on the same page about it being the wrong move.
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Trump was permanently banned from Twitter in January after the Capitol riot on January 6 and was given an indefinite suspension on Facebook, as well. The punishment was decried by Republicans as political censorship and prompted some of them to cut ties with popular social media websites and move to Parler, a conservative-friendly platform.
- Bernie Sanders (I-VT) denounced former President Donald Trump in strong terms on the New York Times podcast 'The Ezra Klein Show,' but said Twitter's permanent suspension of the former.
- Also let’s be real: if any company is the “Bernie Sanders of employers” it would be that one-woman shop that made the senator’s recycled mittens made famous at the inauguration.
- The latest tweets from @SenSanders.
Speaking to Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist, Sanders said he didn't feel 'particularly comfortable' with the sitting president of the United States being unable to express his views on Twitter.
Toll-free: 800-339-9834 Phone: 802-862-0697 Fax: 802-860-6370. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told New York Times podcast 'The Ezra Klein Show' Tuesday he doesn't feel 'particularly comfortable' with Twitter permanently banning former President Trump from the platform. Driving the news: In the interview, Sanders was asked about criticisms from some conservatives that liberals had become 'too censorious.
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He called Trump a 'bad news guy' and agreed that social media shouldn't be used 'for authoritarian purposes and insurrection,' so there needed to be a balance—a balance Sanders didn't know how to create.
'It is an issue that we have got to be thinking about,' Sanders told Klein. 'Because if anybody who thinks yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view.'
The Vermont senator noted that the 'devil is in the details' and he didn't like the idea of giving power away to a 'handful of high tech people.' So, the problem of balancing free speech and allowing harmful rhetoric to spread is one that he said people will have to 'think long and hard' about how to tackle.
'That is how you preserve First Amendment rights without moving this country into a big lie mentality and conspiracy theories,' Sanders said.
Newsweek reached out to former President Trump for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
A majority of Americans agreed with Twitter's ban on Trump's account, according to a survey from The Harris Poll released on January 12, according to USA Today. However, there was a stark partisan divide with only 36 percent of Republicans agreeing with it and 80 percent of Democrats on board.
Feelings changed after Trump left office, though, and a Hill/Harris poll in February found the majority of Americans thought he should be allowed to return. Republicans were more likely than Democrats to support ending the ban, but Trump might have found his own way of communicating with his supporters.
Trump's planning to return to social media with a network of his own, according to Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the former president. He estimated during an interview with Fox News that the platform would be up and running in two to three months, adding that it would be the 'hottest ticket in social media' and 'completely redefine the game.'
Lara Trump, the former president's daughter-in-law, told David Brody on his Water Cooler podcast, that her father-in-law is taking it 'really seriously.' The social media platform will be a place where 'everyone can feel welcome' and 'fact checkers' won't be 'all over' users.
Miller expects the new platform to attract millions of viewers, and 50 percent of Republicans surveyed in a YouGov poll said they were 'very likely' to use the platform. An additional 19 percent were 'somewhat likely' to use it.
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© Provided by Washington ExaminerSen. Bernie Sanders said he does not feel 'comfortable' with Twitter's ban of former President Donald Trump, expressing some concerns about the power dynamics of social media companies.
The Vermont independent was asked by the New York Times about his thoughts on Trump's removal from Twitter following the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, an incident some critics have said was inspired by Trump's ability to rally supporters through the social media platform.
'Do I feel particularly comfortable that the then-president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter?” Sanders told the outlet. “I don’t feel comfortable about that,' the senator added in the report that was published on Tuesday.
Twitter first announced the permanent suspension of Trump on Jan. 8, citing a “close review of recent tweets from” the former president’s personal account. It said in a blog post that the suspension was “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.“
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, a spokesperson for Twitter said Trump's account is permanently suspended due to violation of the 'Glorification of Violence Policy,' adding, 'We explain this decision in this blog published in January.' Twitter said there are no further updates on this decision.
At the time of Trump's suspension, Twitter said the policy “aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Remote play for mac os. Trump was even impeached, a second time, by the House on a charge of incitement of insurrection in connection to the U.S. Capitol riot, but he was acquitted by the Senate.
Republican allies of Trump have railed against the decisions by social media companies to bar the 45th president, and some of his supporters have flocked to alternative platforms such as Parler and Gab after several legacy social media platforms started banning accounts spreading election fraud claims that have been roundly rejected by the courts and election experts.
Aside from Twitter, Trump has been banned from platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Financial companies such as Shopify have taken down two online stores affiliated with Trump, and the company Stripe has said it will no longer process payments for Trump's campaign.
Despite Trump's limited reach to the public post-ban, he has resorted to sending press releases through his Save America PAC to keep his supporters up to date on his latest political statements.
Jason Miller, an adviser to Trump, told Fox News over the weekend that the former president is set to return in the next two or three months through the creation of 'his own platform.'
Sanders did not deter from his criticism of Trump on Tuesday but aimed his critique at Twitter's ability to remove any person it believes violates the company's terms of service, a power the senator argued is too strong for 'a handful of high-tech people.'
“Look, you have a former president in Trump, who is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn’t believe in the rule of law,' Sanders said. 'This is a bad news guy.'
Sanders said he is unsure on how to balance banning alleged claims of “hate speech and conspiracy theories” while protecting free speech but added: 'It is an issue that we have got to be thinking about.'
The senator said: 'I don’t like giving that much power to a handful of high-tech people, but the devil is obviously in the details, and it’s something we’re going to have to think long and hard on, and that is how you preserve First Amendment rights without moving this country into a big lie mentality and conspiracy theories.'
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