White House Announces Trump Will Sign Significant Executive Order
President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order “pertaining to social media” on Thursday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced Wednesday evening, following a multiday feud between the president and Twitter.
“This will be a Big Day for social media and FAIRNESS,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.
The announcement follows the social media giant’s application of an informational label to two of the president’s tweets about mail-in voting.
The warning label on the tweets alleging that mail-in ballots will be fraudulent reads “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”
“These Tweets contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context about mail-in ballots,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill.
Trump was quick to call out the social media giant for bias and tweeted that there will be “Big action to follow!”
Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct. Big action to follow!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020
According to a draft of the order obtained by Bloomberg, it would ask the Federal Communications Commission to issue rules clarifying social media companies’ protections against lawsuits when they act “in good faith.”
The clarification could allow users to sue companies over the removal of social media posts and videos that are inconsistent with the terms of service or do not provide enough notice to the users prior to the removal of the posts.
The draft also includes a directive to recreate the White House Tech Bias Reporting Tool that allows Americans to report instances of alleged censorship online, The Hill reported.
“These platforms act like they are potted plants when [in reality] they are curators of user experiences, i.e. the man behind the curtain for everything we can see or hear,” an administration official told Politico.
This announcement also follows a report from The Wall Street Journal last weekend that Trump is considering creating a panel to review complaints of social media bias.
Earlier in the month, Trump tweeted, “The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google.”
“The Administration is working to remedy this illegal situation. Stay tuned, and send names & events.”
This is the most recent call to action the president and conservatives have made against bias on social media platforms.
“We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through voters,” Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, said in a statement.
“Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility. There are many reasons the Trump campaign pulled all our advertising from Twitter months ago, and their clear political bias is one of them.”
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
