At his social media summit, Trump dusts off claim of bias
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump assailed Facebook, Google and Twitter on Thursday for exhibiting “terrible bias” and silencing his supporters at a White House “social media summit” that critics chastised for giving a prominent stage to some of the internet’s most controversial, incendiary voices.
For Trump, the conference represented his highest profile broadside yet against Silicon Valley after months of accusations that tech giants censor conservative users and websites. In doing so, the president, , entering the 2020 presidential election, also sought to rally his widely followed online allies, whom he described as “journalists and influencers” that together can reach half a billion people.
“Some of you are extraordinary. The crap you think of is unbelievable,” Trump said.
Trump delivered his winding diatribe against Facebook, Google and Twitter — charges of political bias that all three companies long have denied — at an event at the White House featuring Republican lawmakers, GOP campaign strategists and social-media meme makers, a move that led some critics to express dismay that the president actually aimed to use the policy summit as a reelection push.
But Democratic lawmakers and watchdog groups said t hey were most alarmed that Trump had invited supporters who have a history of targeting the president’s political opponents with inflammatory tweets, misleading videos and conspiracy theories. At one point, the president praised James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, which has released widely criticized, highly edited videos of his subjects.
“Somebody said he’s controversial,” Trump said. “He’s truthful.”
In response, critics fretted that Trump had essentially endorsed their controversial tactics in the early days of the 2020 presidential race.
“This has the appearance not of a social media summit but a political rally and call for the right,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. “The fact that some of the most extreme voices on social media are coming to the White House, and they get a forum to complain about how often t hey’re retweeted, and that the actual platform companies aren’t even invited, smacks of the absurd.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center, meanwhile, charged that the president is “essentially conducting a hate summit at the White House,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the group’s work to track online extremism.
Facebook, Google and Twitter declined comment.
For much of the summit, Twitter appeared to be down, an outage the company said it was investigating. Outside the gathering, Trump’s aides lined the hallways with poster boards calling attention to the tech industry’s alleged tactics for suppressing conservatives’ speech — along with at least one tweet from Trump himself calling him “the best” at using the service.
And Trump threatened additional scrutiny, promising to bring big tech companies to Washington for a meeting while directing federal agencies to explore “all regulatory and legislative solutions to protect free speech.”
Trump has skewered Facebook, Google and Twitter for months on allegations that they’re biased against conservatives, even accusing them of trying to rig the election. In March, for example, he said the companies had engaged in “collusion” and worked in opposition to a “certain group of people that happen to be in power, that happen to have won the election.”
Trump has not provided evidence for his allegations that the tech companies seek to undermine Republicans or U.S. elections, and some of the examples he’s cited to illustrate the industry’s bias have been debunked. For example, the president has accused Twitter of tampering with his follower count, a charge he repeated Thursday. The company long has said that users with large followings often experience fluctuations as Twitter removes spam.
Some of the conservatives that Trump consulted Thursday have adopted controversial tactics on social media — and even have been disciplined by Facebook, Google or Twitter for running afoul of their rules. That includes O’Keefe and Project Veritas, whose secretly recorded video of Google drew Trump’s praise Thursday.
Other attendees included Ali Alexander, who sent the initial, inflammatory tweet questioning whether Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a Democratic presidential candidate, is actually an “American black.”