President Trump’s Tough Talk on Big Tech Must Be Followed with Substantive Action
Shane Trejo
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Last week, President Donald J. Trump did what no other public official would ever do: He re-tweeted InfoWars.
This sent the fake news media into a complete frenzy with low-rated CNN hack Brian Stelter actually calling Trump “the InfoWars President.”
.@brianstelter: Trump's furious reaction to Facebook's ban of some high-profile users shows us that he is, I'm sorry to say, the Infowars president. He's promoting the same alternative universe as Infowars and sharing videos from repugnant characters. https://t.co/LDDjK2BEcY pic.twitter.com/wpRVrfQvlR
— CNN (@CNN) May 5, 2019
Despite their hyperbole, the CNN commentators are not exactly wrong. Trump was elected because he would talk about “conspiracy theories” that no other candidate would ever dare broach. Trump engaged the populist right when nobody in the Washington D.C. bubble had the guts to do so, and he was rewarded the Presidency as a result.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1124447302544965634
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1124743267873116160
Trump at least innately understands the power of the anti-establishment message, and social media dissidents were certainly thrilled that the President used his tremendous bully pulpit to amplify the message of the censored voices.
However, we cannot take for granted that Trump will follow through on his strong rhetoric. There have been times where Trump has stated that he would be “observing” important issues only to follow his declarations with total inaction.
Trump once claimed that he was intending to end birthright citizenship via executive order shortly before the 2018 mid-terms, but following the elections, no action was taken on this front, and it was quickly forgotten.
Trump Says He Will Void Birthright Citizenship Law Through Executive Order https://t.co/EDMvO7gNcv
— NPR (@NPR) October 30, 2018
The President also claimed that he was ordering Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study” the genocidal murder of white farmers in South Africa by militant black terrorists. No concrete action ever emerged from that either.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1032454567152246785
President Trump performs the best when he is being pressured by his base. When his supporters lose themselves in the euphoria of Trump’s constant ownage of the libs, he can veer extensively from his electoral mandate.
We are seeing it right now with on the crucial issue of immigration where foreign labor is being imported to the U.S. for low and high wage jobs to boost corporate profit margins at the expense of native workers.
On foreign policy, Trump has similarly strayed from his ‘America First’ mandate by inviting neoconservatives such as Mike Pompeo, Elliott Abrams and John Bolton into his administration. Now regime-change wars are becoming real possibilities in Venezuela and Iran, despite the fact that candidate Trump campaigned against incursions such as the Iraq War.
If the grassroots stops applying pressure on the issue of tech censorship, it may depart from Trump’s radar and fall by the wayside. We cannot allow that to happen. Because as urgent as the issues of immigration and foreign policy are, stopping the Big Tech monopoly from enacting the Orwellian nightmare is of paramount importance.
Lawyers in the Trump administration should be considering all of the options at their disposal from using anti-trust laws to amending enforcement of the Communications Decency Act to classifying tech giants as public utilities. In fact, they should have been at this for quite some time already.
The time has passed for bromides about conservative principles and waxing poetic about the free market. Conservatism has conserved nothing except corporate power. The free market is a misnomer, as powerful multinationals dictate modern capitalism through government privilege.
It’s past time to shake off Chamber of Koch influence like a bad case of fleas, and proceed toward defeating hostile tech giants who are as rabid as AOC in their leftist activist push to destroy our bedrock freedoms.
We must keep the fire burning, with campaigns on problematic social media platforms as well as phone campaigns and other forms of agitation. This life-or-death struggle for freedom of speech cannot go down the memory hole. We owe it to our posterity to defeat the greatest evil of our times, Big Brother.
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