Former presidential candidate and self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, says Twitter’s ban of Trump makes him feel “uncomfortable.” In an interview published by the New York Times on Tuesday, the pro-socialist expressed hesitation when it came to silencing a President of the United States, despite really not liking the man.
“Look, you have a former president in Trump, who was a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn’t believe in the rule of law. This is a bad news guy” Sanders told the NYT.
However, Sanders added, “Do I feel particularly comfortable that the then-president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter? I don’t feel comfortable about that.” Sanders argued if a social media platform flexes its muscles to ban someone like Trump, they could ban anyone, including those like him, who have different points of view.
Fox News reported, “Sanders added that social media shouldn’t serve as a platform ‘for authoritarian purposes and insurrection,’ but maintained that the issue is one ‘that we have got to be thinking about because if anybody who thinks yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a different point of view.”
Sanders also said a “handful of high-tech people” making their own distinctions between free speech and dangerous rhetoric is something he does not feel comfortable with. Other liberal politicians have defending Trump’s right to free speech, including French President Emanuel Macron who reportedly said, “I don’t want to live in a democracy where the key decisions and the decision to, at a point of time, to cut your mic…is decided by a private player, a private social network.”
