Let Donald Trump tweet away
Twitter and Facebook acted correctly in restoring former President Donald Trump’s right to use their platforms. He has not done so yet, mainly because he is obligated to use Truth Social, the third-rate outlet he created after his exile. But Twitter and Facebook have been critical weapons in his political arsenal, and they should be available to him again as he seeks another term in the White House.
Trump is a congenital liar and egomaniacal demagogue who tried to subvert the last election and could well try to steal the next one. But even liars and demagogues have rights.
The answer is not to silence him. It is to debate him. Challenge him. Expose him. Show him up. Hold him accountable. Take him apart.
Trump’s star is fading, but he remains a major force, and in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favor him for their party’s nomination (49% want someone else). In a head-to-head matchup with President Joe Biden, Trump leads 48 to 45.
The lily-livered liberals who want Trump’s exile to continue are advocating a strategy of fear and weakness, not strength and confidence. They should listen to Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, who defended Trump’s reinstatement this way:
“This is the right call — not because the former president has any right to be on the platform but because the public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office … It’s better if the major social media platforms err on the side of leaving speech up, even if the speech is offensive or false, so that it can be addressed by other users and other institutions.”
This is not just a question of principle. The public is better off when Trump uses major social media platforms because those posts reveal his true, toxic colors. Twitter Trump is real in ways Teleprompter Trump is not.
“We learn an enormous amount about his mindset from his tweets,” CNN’s former media reporter Brian Stelter told the Columbia Journalism Review. Added Matthew Ingram: “Apart from their news value, Trump’s tweets also provide something else, and that is a real-time look inside the mind and psyche of the president of the United States. It may be a dark place, and looking into it repeatedly may be soul-destroying and depressing for a number of reasons, but it is still arguably valuable to have those thoughts out in public where we can see them.”
All rights have limits, and Trump breached those limits on Jan. 6, 2021, when he encouraged a coup to overturn the election results of the previous November.
Even a free speech evangelist like Jack Dorsey, then the head of Twitter, defended his decision to ban Trump by saying, “We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real.”
Yes, it is. But Dorsey presciently warned that his action “sets a precedent that I feel is dangerous: the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.” Just look at Dorsey’s successor at Twitter, Elon Musk — a man truly deranged by wealth and power — to see how right Dorsey was.
So where do we go from here? If corporate titans like Musk are “dangerous” when they misuse their position to manipulate free speech, government regulation is not the answer either.
In fact, it would probably be worse. That’s why the founders were so wise in drafting the First Amendment.
One answer is for powerful private platforms to adopt a policy of balance and transparency.
In reinstating Trump, Meta — Facebook and Instagram’s parent company — abandoned a binary, in-or-out model and set a series of “guardrails” that would restrict and punish public figures like Trump if they spread misinformation or incite violence, but without completely silencing them.
“We believe it is both necessary and possible to draw a line between content that is harmful and should be removed, and content that, however distasteful or inaccurate, is part of the rough and tumble of life in a free society,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs.
We should embrace that “rough and tumble,” not avoid it. So, tweet away, Mr. Trump. Fill Facebook with your fantasies.
We can take it. The truth will always triumph.