Ban Trump from social media

The warning signs were there for weeks, but yesterday was still a bit of a shock. But the shock wasn’t about what occurred, but rather how it was handled. Capitol police claim “they had a ‘robust plan’ to address anticipated First Amendment activities,” but that they were instead met with “criminal riotous behavior." This is hard to square with Sam Sacks’ reporting that “Capitol Police ordered all contractors and vendors to not come to the Capitol on Wednesday,” as well as the response to the rioters when compared with the show of force they mustered during the Black Live Matters protests.

Moving on to yesterday's events... I would say the mask is off with Trump, but then again there never was one. Trump is exactly what we thought he was, a dangerous man who only cares about himself. Yesterday’s events leave that assessment incontrovertible. Details are sketchy, but CNN reports that 4 people died during the siege. Any lives given in service to that man’s inability to accept reality are obviously injustices, but it seems we’re fortunate that the siege didn’t leave us far worse off.

Some inside the administration were reportedly discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove president Trump from office. That seems a good idea, and one we might have invoked long ago, but I doubt the cabinet would do it unless their hand was forced. (To be removed via the 25th, the VP and a majority of the cabinet need to determine that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties” of their office. If that happened, Trump could contest it and then 2/3 of both Congress and the Senate would then have to side with removing him to make it happen. (Let’s not hold our breath.)

Removing Trump immediately seems a very good idea (he still has the football, right?), but let’s set that aside and look forward. Inauguration Day is just two weeks away and Biden’s victory was certified last night, so if nothing changes, Trump can, and likely will, wreak havoc for the next two weeks. That said, the system is set to eject him from the White House soon. What happens after Inauguration Day? Having him out of office seems a very good thing, but would it remove the danger?

What’s the Danger?

While the chaotic scenes in the Capitol were distressing, I found interviews with Trump’s supporters on the plaza to be more troubling. Those people expressed pride at the fact that rioters stormed the Capitol, while claiming the election was stolen and denying basic facts about the day’s events. (Check out the interviews here or the video in the tweet below.) If these were anomalous, I’d be going on about something else today, but they aren’t. f

Taking the QAnon conspiracy theory as a proxy for misinformed Trump supporters, you might see how bad things have gotten. (It’s admittedly an imperfect comparison, but you can judge for yourself.) A survey taken this fall found that 56% of Republicans believe the QAnon conspiracy was either mostly or partly true, whereas just 4% of Democrats thought it was even partly true. (72% of Dems completely refuted the idea.) When asked to denounce the conspiracy, Trump declined to do so, while noting his appreciation for their support. Meanwhile, the FBI has called the group “extremists” and labeled them as “a potential domestic terror threat.”

Also, there’s this. (I’m not gonna comment.)

While those who buy into the QAnon conspiracy are surely not all Trump supporters, let’s say the Venn diagram between the two has significant overlap and move on…

The point of this post is to make the argument that social media platforms need to ban Trump permanently. On Twitter alone, he has nearly 90 million followers. Many of those are there for the clown show, but there are obviously plenty of people who have bought into his nonsense. Severing the direct link the platforms provide him is long overdue. We all know this.

The leaders of the platforms know this. They admitted as much when they removed posts and temporarily froze his accounts yesterday. Per Zuck, they’ve now upped the ante by keeping him locked out of Facebook and Instagram until after the inauguration, to ensure a peaceful transition.

I hope Twitter follows suit, but locking him out for two weeks does nothing to deal with the danger going forward. For that, we need him off these sites for good. (That won’t solve all our problems, but it would be a great start.) As Ryan Cooper and Gianpiero Petriglieri note, there are serious dangers ahead that need to be dealt with immediately. Failing to do so invites more and bigger challenges to what remains of US democracy.

Fortunately, some of our representatives seem up to the task. Ilhan Omar announced that she was drawing up Articles of Impeachment, and Cori Bush introduced legislation to remove members of the House who supported election challenges for Trump. And Chuck Schumer called for the cabinet to remove the president by way of the 25th Amendment and called for Congress to return for Impeachment hearings if the cabinet did not come through. Let’s hold him to it.

We need to do everything we can to keep Donald Trump from sowing division and encouraging violence. The first step seems obvious: get him off of social media. Do it now.

Update:

President Trump has just thrown his supporters under the bus. This is hardly surprising, but it's probably a shock to those who tried to take the Capitol building for him. Hopefully, this will help some of them break the spell.