Kamala Harris should realize that banning Trump from Twitter wouldn't punish him — it would punish the American people

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

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Candidates in the Democratic 2020 presidential primary race are pulling all the stops to differentiate themselves from their competitors. With this broad a field, it is interesting to watch how each candidate chooses to separate themselves from the pack: Elizabeth Warren with her four-hour selfie lines, Andrew Yang with his pledge to hand out $1,000 to each adult American, and so on.

But not all of these publicity stunts are home runs. Today, Sen. Kamala Harris penned a letter—on a campaign letterhead, no less—to Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, asking him to boot President Donald Trump off of Dorsey’s platform.

Harris doesn’t realize what a massive blunder this is for her campaign. There is already a culture on the right diametrically opposed to any social media censorship. Her letter encouraging such bias will only energize the right against her.

The circumstantial evidence surrounding alleged left-wing bias in Silicon Valley will be all the more strengthened by the removal of the president from a prominent social media platform — not to mention the fact that Harris is calling for the silencing of her political opponent’s speech. The White House has asserted that Harris’s appeal to Dorsey was “authoritarian” in nature, and I agree.

Sen. Harris’ letter is also a lousy campaign strategy. She’s attacking a great source of political fodder. Trump tweets are incredibly easy targets; they may as well be gift-wrapped with fundraising bows. Losing Trump’s tweets may go a long way to appease the relatively small number of radical #Resistance members who exist on Twitter, but having that accessible a target is useful to maintain momentum in a primary. And what would the loss of President Trump’s Twitter access mean for the population at large?

Political or not, every single American has an opinion on Trump’s Twitter account. Many on the right love Trump’s tweets because they are a reflection of his true self, rarely seen outside of his massive rallies: unfiltered, raw, and presidential, for better or worse. Others on the right tolerate Trump tweets as a matter of free speech principle. Still others join the rest of the nation in condemnation of the language and tone Trump’s tweets exhibit.

Despite my personal dislike of Trump’s tweets, I love that we, as a populace, can have more direct access to our politicians these days. Social media allows us to have intimate encounters with the leaders of our country on a scale technologically unheard of just 20 years ago. Social media is the pinnacle of humanity’s need to communicate, and the specifically political application of social media is incredibly formidable.

Circumventing the press to bring the message straight to the people used to be nearly impossible. Taking that kind of platform away from the President isn’t just punishing him; it’s punishing the American people who would no longer be able to see the President’s reactions immediately, sans spin.

Sen. Harris’ letter comes at a time when American rhetoric is reaching peak heights of awful. Social media has done a lot of good to bring us together, and it also contributes to the massive partisan split in the country. But which is better: more words or less?

For me, I will always choose more words, more free speech, and more debate. To advocate for the silencing of political opponents, even on a private platform, is antithetical to the principles the First Amendment was founded on. And coming from Harris, a former prosecutor, the cold shoulder she is giving to the Constitution in her actions speaks much louder than her letter.

Alec Sears (@Alec_Sears) is a conservative writer based in Washington DC