Bernie Sanders said on Tuesday that he is not “comfortable” with Twitter’s permanent ban of former President Donald Trump from the platform.
The moment: During a podcast interview, New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein asked Sanders, an Independent senator for Vermont and a leading progressive, about conservative criticism that liberals have become “too censorious.”
- “Look, you have a former president in Trump, who was a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn’t believe in the rule of law. This is a bad-news guy,” Sanders said.
- “But if you’re asking me, do I feel particularly comfortable that the then-president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter? I don’t feel comfortable about that.”
- “Because yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned, and tomorrow, it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view,” he added. “I don’t like giving that much power to a handful of high-tech people.”
Like some on the pro-Trump right, Sanders’ opposition to Big Tech has as much to do with opposing corporate power as with protecting free speech.
- Sanders suggested to Klein that a degree of censorship is needed to prevent the internet from being used to promote “hate speech and conspiracy theories” or “authoritarian purposes and insurrection.”
- Sanders has previously called for breaking up Big Tech companies and other “monopolies.”
Twitter declined Axios’ request for comment on Sanders’ remarks, but a spokesperson pointed to the company’s January blog post saying Trump was banned due to the “risk of further incitement of violence” following the Capitol riot.
Another hearing: Both Democrats and Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have been talking tough ahead of yet another hearing with top tech executives, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
- Committee chair Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, told Axios he wanted to regulate Big Tech to “create a disincentive for these companies to amplify this content that leads to violence.”
- The GOP members, meanwhile, vowed in a statement to “hold Big Tech accountable for failing to be good stewards on their platforms” and for censoring political speech.
