Mostly meaningless exec order
in court, what isn't?” Trump said. “But I think we will do well.”
Trump's order also directs Attorney General William Barr to work with state authorities in going after social media companies engaging in “deceptive business practices.” Lastly, the order instructs Trump's administration to ensure that taxpayer dollars don't make it into the coffers of social media companies via ad buys or other means.
Despite being a prolific social media user with an enormous audience, Trump has long and almost exclusively without evidence accused Twitter and Facebook of silencing conservatives like himself.
The last drop that brought Trump to issue Thursday's order was Twitter's decision this week to add fact-check alerts to a couple inaccurate tweets mail-in ballots.
“They try to silence views they disagree with by selectively applying a fact-check,” Trump said. “What they choose to fact-check and what they choose to ignore or even promote is nothing more than a political activism group, or political activism, and it's inappropriate.”
The alerts urge users to “get the facts” about a couple of Trump tweets that claimed California was sending out ballots to undocumented immigrants and that the process would result in mailboxes getting “robbed” and ballots being “forged” or “even illegally printed out.”
By clicking the “get the facts” link, users are brought to stories from a variety of media outlets as well as a list of bullet points compiled by of his about
Twitter noting there's no evidence for Trump's assertions and that mail-in ballots have been widely used during the coronavirus pandemic to make voting safer.
Trump exploded after the fact-check announcement and thumbed out a string of posts on Twitter — where else — deriding the action as politically motivated.
“Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,” Trump tweeted Wednesday.
Trump — who himself voted via mail-in Florida's Republican primary in March — acknowledged Thursday he likely can't legally shut down Twitter, but insisted he was correct about mail-in voting.