Trump versus Twitter: The President's Ongoing Battle to Suppress Free Speech

On May 26th, President Donald Trump tweeted the following statement, “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.....living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!” This claim Donald Trump makes, that suggests voting by mail would be “substantially fraudulent” is an inaccurate assessment of the vote by mail process. However, despite the lack of evidence that would support Trump’s claims, he continues to assert to the media and within press conferences that the vote by mail system is corrupt. This fear mongering process can have a negative impact on our democratic process, spreading misinformation such as this can be very harmful. In lieu of this, Twitter placed a fact checking label on these tweets by the President, declaring it as a part of their “efforts to enforce our civic integrity policy.” This was an excellent move to force accountability on the statements of Trump and a substantial effort to derail conversations that attack our very democracy with the spread of misinformation. These scare tactics are particularly counterproductive given the fact that the majority of Americans will have an increased need for Vote by Mail in the current context of the ongoing pandemic where not only voters are at risk but poll-workers as well.

Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump immediately took issue with Twitter’s efforts to fact check his statements. His retaliation was taken even further than his typical and expected aggressive rants on the internet, because he decided to issue an executive order (which took place June 1st) to target social media companies. Trump argues that the need for this executive order comes from social media companies having “unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter, virtually any form of communication between private citizens and large public audiences." Trump’s long time battle with his perception of “fake news”, which typically is a category dedicated to any and all statements that contradict his point of view, so in that way this executive order somes at little surprise to many. However it is important that we understand the implications of this order, as they are incredibly serious and beginning to raise questions about whether or not this is a violation of our constitutional rights. The irony of claiming that Twitter is “censoring” him, by combatting it with a blatant seize of power to censor freedom of speech on the internet, is nothing short of ridiculous. Facebook responded to this order which included the following statement: “We believe in protecting freedom of expression on our services, while protecting our community from harmful content including content designed to stop voters from exercising their right to vote.”  At this time it is hard to tell exactly what the order will be able to control, due to the vagueness of its wording. Despite this, we must remain vigilant of these power grabs as it is a clear attempt on Trump’s behalf to equip the government with censorship powers. This is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to Trump’s targeting of our constitutional rights. There is currently a proposed bill, known as The Earn It bill, which is aiming to grant power to the government to be able to scan all of our messages online. Again, we are seeing direct targets to our freedom of speech. It is more important now than ever that we are vocal about these concerns and that we continue to fight to maintain our rights of freedom of speech. To find out more about the Earn It Bill visit: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-bill-governments-not-so-secret-plan-scan-every-message-online