A new message from your friends at People For the American Way.
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Friend,

Welcome to our weekly “Trumptastrophe” email series that serves to remind
us of the destructive policies, decisions, and actions we encountered
during the Trump presidency and the threats that he and others in the MAGA
movement still pose – and to keep those moments clear in our memory as we
fight to defeat Republican extremists during the upcoming elections.

This week’s Trumptastrophe focuses on former President Trump’s rocky
relationship with social media. Indeed, although social media was one of
the very tools responsible for his rise to prominence within the
Republican Party, Trump and right-wing conservatives often attack social
media companies when their content is removed or flagged for violating
each platform’s policies regarding what they consider to be acceptable
content. This stormy relationship has led to conservatives calling for the
weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission if Trump were to be
reelected so they can penalize companies unwilling to allow their lies and
misinformation to be broadcast to their users:

On May 27, 2020, Trump [ [link removed] ]threatened to “strongly regulate” social media
companies or “close them down.” Trump was angry about Twitter
[ [link removed] ]putting fact-checking [ [link removed] ]notes on two “[ [link removed] ]potentially misleading”
tweets in which he made unsubstantiated claims about mail-in ballots and
voter fraud.

Just one day after his threat, Trump signed an executive order that Human
Rights Watch [ [link removed] ]called “a profound attack on online freedom of expression
globally” by targeting “companies that displease government.” The
[ [link removed] ]order included typically Trumpian whining about his tweets having been
flagged as inaccurate. At a press event announcing the order, he
complained even more, calling fact-checks a form of “political activism.”

The day after Trump issued his executive order, he used his Twitter
account to [ [link removed] ]warn that he would deploy the military against people
protesting George Floyd’s killing by a police officer, and threatening,
“when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter [ [link removed] ]labeled it with
a notice saying it violated the platform’s rules against glorifying
violence.

Four years later, Trump and his advisers are [ [link removed] ]vowing that if he
gets back into power, he will “come after” big tech companies and media
outlets whose moderation policies and political coverage he doesn’t like.

Trump complained in 2020 that social media companies were silencing
conservative voices, a frequent complaint from right-wing figures. There
was never much substance to the claim, and it is particularly ridiculous
now that X/Twitter under the leadership of Trump fan Elon Musk has proudly
re-platformed the disinformation-spewing former president, along with
far-right figures who promote white nationalism, antisemitism, and other
forms of extremism.

Trump’s 2024 campaign team is in fact [ [link removed] ]deploying a “troll army” to
attack his enemies on social media. Right Wing Watch noted earlier this
year that Trump’s trolls are led by an “[ [link removed] ]overtly racist,
[ [link removed] ]unapologetically misogynistic, and [ [link removed] ]gleefully amoral” online
activist called Brenden Dilley.

Trump’s 2020 executive order charged the Commerce Secretary with asking
the Federal Communications Commission to define standards for evaluating
whether social media companies were applying “good faith” in moderating
content, and threatened companies with legal action. It sought to ban
federal agencies from advertising on platforms deemed to be biased against
conservatives. In response, one FCC commissioner [ [link removed] ]said Trump wanted to
turn the commission into “the president’s speech police.”

The White House [ [link removed] ]told reporters that some of the ideas in Trump’s order
grew out of a “[ [link removed] ]social media summit” Trump held the previous summer
with a clown car of far-right online personalities. At that event, Trump
gave what The New York Times called “his own unique interpretation of the
First Amendment,” saying it’s “not free speech” if “you see something good
and then you purposedly write bad.” Afterward, he told supporters that
tech companies were, like “the FAKE NEWS media,” an “[ [link removed] ]enemy of the
people.”

You don’t have to be part of the MAGA movement to have concerns about the
power wielded by huge tech firms and the influence of their platforms and
algorithms. Protecting free speech and preventing harm and harassment are
a complicated balancing act. Last year, the Supreme Court [ [link removed] ]ruled that
tech companies could not be sued by family members of a victim of an ISIS
terror attack for having failed to keep ISIS content off their platforms.
There have been bipartisan calls in Congress to revisit regulation of tech
platforms.

In response to current congressional efforts to do away with provisions
contained in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protect
tech companies from liability for what others publish on their platforms
and protect them against legal action for moderating content, the Center
for Democracy and Technology [ [link removed] ]wrote this month that “Section 230 is
about free expression” and warned that repealing the section without a
clear alternative in place would “threaten user’s free expression rights
and exacerbate the very problems some in Congress seek to solve.” New
America has [ [link removed] ]suggested alternatives for addressing online harms.

Trump and his advisers don’t seem that interested in policy nuance. Trump
adviser and far-right ideological warrior Steve Bannon has called the
people who run tech companies “[ [link removed] ]evil” and “sociopaths.” Attacking “big
tech” and the media are reliable ways to get applause at MAGA gatherings.

Trump’s allies at [ [link removed] ]Project 2025 vow that under a likeminded president,
they will seize control of any sources of independence in the executive
branch that might slow the imposition of the president’s will. Project
2025’s policy agenda says its top priority for the FCC will be “reining in
Big Tech,” which they [ [link removed] ]accuse of trying to “drive diverse political
viewpoints from the town square.” And, in a show of Trumpian contempt for
checks and balances, Project 2025 calls on the FCC to issue an order
interpreting Section 230 differently than courts have.

As Bruce Maiman noted in a HuffPost [ [link removed] ]column, “Control of all federal
branches would mean control of the Federal Communications Commission,
which makes and enforces rules for television, radio and internet
companies. You can imagine an effort to neutralize the power of a media
that routinely has exposed Trump’s well-documented lies and
improprieties.” Indeed, it doesn’t take much imagination when you have
Trump advisers threatening to “come after” the media, and Trump himself
vowing to “come down hard” on MSNBC and “make them pay for their illegal
political activity.”

These are just some of the reasons we need YOU in this
fight. So, find your
favorite way to unwind after reading through this week’s recap, and then
make a plan for how you will fight back this week, this month, this
election cycle.

For members who are interested in sharing the weekly Trumptastrophe
series, [ [link removed] ]you can find all previous editions on our website! This post
will be published by Thursday so you can share with your friends and
family and remind them of the importance of ensuring that Trump is
defeated again this November.

[ [link removed] ]If you’d like to opt-out of this series but still continue receiving
our other email content, you can do so here >>

Thanks for all that you do to defeat Republican extremism.

– People For the American Way

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