Facebook bans Trump: Ex-president floats 2024 run and threatens Mark Zuckerberg as McGahn testifies

Twitter users reacted to Facebook’s decision to suspend former President Donald Trump for at least two years with many saying that the social media giant should follow Twitter’s lead and make the ban permanent.

Politics professor at the University of Virginia Larry Sabato, wrote: “The ban should be permanent. Trump’s January 6th coup attempt demands a lifetime suspension.”

President and CEO of Media Matters for America, Angelo Carusone, tweeted: “Mark Zuckerberg explicitly acknowledged that Trump used Facebook ‘to incite a violent insurrection’. And yet, that doesn’t rise to the level of permanent removal apparently. So you gotta wonder...what would?”

The former president was suspended indefinitely from all platforms controlled by Facebook after the 6 January riot when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.

Mr Trump’s account will remain suspended until 7 January 2023. Facebook has said that he will only get his account back if the “risk to public safety has receded”.

Co-founder of the Democratic Coalition, Scott Dworkin, wrote that the ban is “not good enough. We demand it be permanent”.

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Donald Trump has issued a furious response to his two-year Facebook ban, calling the company’s decision “an insult.”

“Facebook’s ruling is an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election,” the former president said in a statement. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!”

Donald Trump has been banned from Facebook for at least two years, the social media giant announced on 4 June.

His account, according to the company, will remain suspended until 7 January 2023, and he will only be reinstated if the “risk to public safety has receded.” Even if the bombastic ex-president does return, he will face “a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions” that would be applied if he broke more user rules.

When Donald Trump was banned “indefinitely” by Facebook in the wake of January’s US Capitol attack it became the first social media company to meaningfully silence him.

Mark Zuckerberg said at the time his dramatic action against the then-president was essential to prevent more political violence ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration.

It was the most high-profile ban in the company’s history and a move that was quickly followed by other social media giants.

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Even though Facebook announced on Friday it was extending its ban on Donald Trump’s account until 2023, the White House says it’s unlikely the former president will change his ways.

“It feels pretty unlikely that the zebra is going to change his stripes over the next two years,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday at a press briefing, adding, “Our view continues to be, every platform, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, any other platform that is disseminating info to millions of Americans, has a responsibility to crack down in disinformation, has a responsibility to crack down on false information, whether it’s about the election or even about the vaccine.”

Ms Psaki implied that the former president’s conduct on the social network, where he frequently spread lies about the election and threatened his opponents, helped contribute to the 6 January riots at the Capitol.

“We learned a lot from the former president over the last couple years, about his behaviour and how he uses these platforms,” she said, noting, “We saw the impact on January 6 of words on social media platforms, and we’ve seen the impact of words as it relates to disinformation traveling around the vaccine, around election integrity.”

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After Facebook banned former president Donald Trump for the next two years, some observers pointed out something interesting about the timing: the ban will end before the 2024 presidential election, when Mr Trump is considering running.

“Facebook is like: this was a horrific attack on our democracy, and we will ban Trump for two years, allowing for reinstatement right around the time he formally announces for his 2024 campaign,” one Twitter user wrote.

Facebook says it will revisit the ban on 7 January, 2023 – exactly two years after it suspended his account in the wake of the Capitol riot, which many blame the former president for inciting. The company says it will only let Mr Trump back on if the “risk to public safety has receded.”

But if it does reinstate him, that leaves plenty of time for Mr Trump to ramp up a potential campaign for president. In the past two elections, Facebook was an important campaign tool for Mr Trump, not only for getting his message out but for fundraising. Lifting the ban at the beginning of 2023 would be a huge boon to a Trump 2024 campaign.

And as The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg points out, it would also absolve Facebook of a thorny ethical question.

“Because the two-year time frame allows for the possibility that Trump will be allowed on the site in the run-up to the 2024 election – an election he has teased the possibility of running in – it will also allow the company to sidestep some complaints about them silencing a potential presidential candidate,” Mr Feinberg writes.

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Donald Trump has responded to his two-year Facebook ban with a ban of his own – of Mark Zuckerberg, from White House dinners.

“Next time I’m in the White House there will be no more dinners, at his request, with Mark Zuckerberg and his wife,” the former president said in a brief statement. “It will be all business!”

Mr Trump has hinted since he left office that he may run for president again in 2024. His inclusion of the phrase “next time I’m in the White House” strongly implied that he’ll do so.

In Chicago, condo prices are down 34 per cent. In Las Vegas, even as prices soar at other properties, hotel rooms are down 4 per cent. In Waikiki, Hawaii, prices have taken a 23 per cent hit over the last four years. These are just some of the dire numbers facing the Trump business empire now that its famous figurehead is out of the White House.

According to a new analysis from the Associated Press, rents and sale prices are way down at Trump-branded properties across the country, some losing more than a third of their value in recent years.

This has sent people to Trump looking for bargains—though in the world of New York real estate, that’s a relative term.

The hit has been particularly bad in New York, the symbolic heart of the Trump enterprise, where prices are at 15-year lows and Trump buildings are selling at lower prices per square foot than the average across the rest of the city, according to the analysis.

“I have never seen buildings plummet so dramatically,” Ondel Hylton, a senior content director at CityRealty, told the news agency. “It seems like this is a bottom.”

Read more here.

Rep Jerry Nadler described Don McGahn as “somewhat difficult” during his long-delayed testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.

“I think he’s being somewhat difficult, but you’ll see that when the transcript comes out,” Rep Nadler, who chairs the committee, told USA Today. “He’s cooperative some of the time.”

Mr McGahn, a former White House lawyer under former president Donald Trump, finally testified today after House Democrats subpoenaed him more than two years ago. The Trump administration blocked him from speaking, but Democrats and Mr McGahn’s lawyers finally reached a deal for an interview last month.

The testimony took place behind closed doors, with no members of the press present. A transcript of the interview will be released within seven days.

Mr McGahn played a central role in the drama over special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Donald Trump improperly sought Russia’s help in the 2016 election. He reportedly refused Mr Trump’s request that he fire Mr Mueller, and refused again when Mr Trump asked him to deny that he ever tried to fire him.

Republican congressman Matt Gaetz briefly commented on Don McGahn’s congressional testimony, saying it did not seem to implicate Donald Trump in any wrongdoing.

“We’ve learned nothing new,” Mr Gaetz told The Hill. “My perception of the events is Mr McGahn is unable to identify any unlawful conduct on the part of the president [Mr Trump] or any other member of the president’s administration.”

Mr Gaetz is on the House Judiciary Committee, which finally interviewed Mr McGahn on Friday. Mr McGahn, a former Trump administration lawyer, had defied House Democrats’ subpoenas for over two years.

The interview was held behind closed doors, and the public will not learn what was said until a transcript is released some time in the next seven days.