Lara Trump agrees with Bernie Sanders on Donald Trump’s ‘scary’ Twitter ban

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump has said that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is “exactly right” after he described the former president’s ban from Twitter as “scary”.

Ms Trump, 38, who is the host of conservative podcast The Right View, made the comments during an appearance on pro-Trump TV network Newsmax on Friday.

During the interview, Ms Trump spoke about comments Mr Sanders made in a conversation with The New York Times on Tuesday, where the prominent progressive politician said that he felt conflicted about Mr Trump’s Twitter ban, as it was implemented when he was still president.

“Because if anybody who thinks yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view,” Mr Sanders said in the interview last week.

Senator Sanders added: “So I don’t like giving that much power to a handful of high tech people, but the devil is obviously in the details and it’s something we’re going to have to think long and hard on, and that is how you preserve First Amendment rights without moving this country into a big lie mentality and conspiracy theories.”

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After Newsmax played a portion of the interview during the conversation on Friday, the 38-year-old joked that the remarks were “one of the few things I agree with Bernie Sanders on”.

“He’s exactly right,” Ms Trump said. “They shield themselves behind the idea that these are private companies and they don’t have to follow the same rules as other outlets.”

“They absolutely should. Our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech should be upheld across the board, period. That should be the bottom line here,” Ms Trump added.

Ms Trump then expressed agreement with Mr Sanders that Mr Trump’s Twitter ban could lead to people of different political beliefs being taken off the social media platform.

“When you have people who have the ability to censor and shut down the President of the United States, that is really scary. You might not like Donald Trump, but if it’s Donald Trump today, it could be your guy or girl tomorrow. It could be you tomorrow,” Ms Trump said.

“It is not a good precedent. It is not good for the country. It’s not good for our standing in the world. It’s a really scary prospect,” she added.

President Trump was banned from several social media platforms including Twitter in early January, after a mob of his supporters breached the US Capitol, in an event that killed five people and injured several others.

The rioters attacked the Capitol after attending a rally led by Mr Trump, who urged supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and told them: “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

Mr Trump was later impeached by the House on a charge of “incitement of insurrection” in relation to the rally, but was acquitted by the Senate despite a majority voting for his conviction.

Twitter had also labelled several misleading posts by Mr Trump about 3 November’s presidential election leading up to the ban, which led to calls for him to be taken off the platform. Twitter had always argued that his account was necessary for the public interest.

However, after the violence at the capitol, Twitter announced Mr Trump’s permanent suspension, writing: “We have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.

“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter rules would potentially result in this very course of action.”

The social media platform added: “We made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things.”