Trump’s bid to muzzle social media flayed
US President Donald Trump issued an executive order yesterday seeking to strip social media giants like Twitter of legal immunity for content they publish. If this was enacted, the likes of Twitter and Facebook would become open to lawsuits and greatly increased government regulation.
Trump — angered this week by Twitter’s tagging of one of his tweets for the first time with a fact-check notice — said regulation was needed because the companies are no longer neutral forums but engaging in “political activism.”
The President’s remarks and the draft order, as written, attempts to circumvent Congress and the courts in directing changes to long-established interpretations of Section 230. It represents the latest attempt by Trump to use the tools of the Presidency to force private companies to change policies that he believes are not favourable to him.
Jack Balkin, a Yale University constitutional law professor said: “The president is trying to frighten, coerce, scare, cajole social media companies to leave him alone and not do what Twitter has just done to him.”
President Donald Trump marked yesterday the “sad milestone” of 100,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States, after his earlier silence prompted criticism that he was failing in his duty to console victims and their loved ones.
“We have just reached a very sad milestone with the coronavirus pandemic deaths reaching 100,000,” Trump posted on Twitter, about 16 hours after the death toll passed the threshold according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker.
“To all of the families & friends of those who have passed, I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy & love for everything that these great people stood for & represent. God be with you!”
The US death toll, from 1.7mn confirmed infections, is by far the highest of any nation, and critics have accused the president of an inadequate early response to the pandemic.
Trump has repeatedly said any death from the Covid-19 respiratory disease, caused by the coronavirus, is tragic.
However, he has been chided for appearing to concern himself more with the country digging out from economic devastation than consoling tens of thousands of American families shattered by the loss of loved ones.
He has also been criticised for repeatedly offering unduly optimistic predictions about the final death count, only to be quickly contradicted each time by the relentlessly rising toll.
On Wednesday, as many American politicians including the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden were sharing their condolences and grief over the grim milestone, Trump was tweeting repeatedly about other issues.
He posted more than 40 times on social media – on a variety of subjects but not about Covid-19 victims, unleashing a barrage of Twitter posts on everything from surveillance legislation to the 2001 death of a former congressional staff member for Joe Scarborough, now a cable television host critical of Trump – between Wednesday evening and his morning tweet yesterday that acknowledged the 100,000 dead.
He also threatened to shut down social media platforms he accused of stifling conservative voices.
Democrats savaged the president for appearing insensitive to the magnitude of the moment.
“The day the United States hit 100,000 deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic Trump shares a message calling himself ‘the greatest president in our history’. His vanity is nauseating,” congressman Don Beyer tweeted.
Former vice-president Biden, who will challenge Trump for the White House in November, swiftly addressed the coronavirus milestone by releasing a video message to survivors.
“There are moments in our history so grim, so heart-rending, that they’re forever fixed in each of our hearts as shared grief. Today is one of those moments,” Biden said on Wednesday. “Take some solace from the fact that we all grieve with you.”
Though the US has the highest number of deaths, it is not the most affected in terms of fatalities per million inhabitants.
Belgium leads with 808 deaths per million inhabitants, followed by Spain with 580 and Britain’s 552 – according to official government figures, according to AFP data compiled by official figures.
The US has 303 deaths per million inhabitants.
Trump, eyeing re-election later this year, has repeatedly said he is eager to get back to business and has urged states to lift lockdowns.
But top health adviser Anthony Fauci – whose guidance has often clashed with Trump’s – once again called for caution.
“Don’t start leapfrogging over the recommendations of some of the guidelines because that’s really tempting fate and asking for trouble,” Fauci told CNN.