According to The Independent, former President Donald Trump is trying to get bans lifted from his social media accounts after he was deplatformed for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. It was previously reported that YouTube would lift its suspension on Trump’s channel when it determines the risk of real-world violence has decreased. On Monday, the twice-impeached one-term president asked a Florida judge to issue a preliminary injunction in his case against YouTube that would compel the company to reinstate his access to the video-sharing platform.
In his lawsuit, Trump argued that the ban caused irreparable harm to his ability to potentially run for office again in the future, such as by blocking his ability to fundraise off of the platforms through advertisements for merchandise, the outlet reports.
It’s not just YouTube.
“Mr. Trump’s attorneys are planning similar filings against Facebook and Twitter in the weeks ahead,” The Independent reports. “Mr. Trump remains banned from all three platforms as of now, with Facebook deciding earlier this year to extend the former president’s ban through at least 2023.”
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“The lawsuit also mentions a favored conspiracy theory of Mr. Trump and his supporters regarding his ban and alleged pressure from congressional Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on tech companies to remove the then-president from their platforms,” the report continues.
CEO of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Susan Wojcicki, explained why Trump’s account was still suspended in March.
“The channel remains suspended due to the risk of incitement to violence,” Wojcicki said, according to Reuters. She said that recent warnings by the Capitol police about a potential new attack that month showed that an “elevated violence risk still remains.”
The New York Post reports that the former president “brought class-action lawsuits against the three Big Tech titans last month, seeking unspecified damages for alleged First Amendment violations that Trump said could total “trillions” of dollars.”
The Post also notes that “the injunction would allow Trump to continue selling merchandise on YouTube, potentially critical to political fundraising efforts.”
Last month, a North Carolina man, Floyd Ray Roseberry, surrendered to police after telling them he had a bomb in his truck parked outside the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill. That threat from the Trump supporter led to the evacuation of the library, the Supreme Court, a House office building, and the offices of the Republican National Committee, and it ended after five hours.
Meanwhile, the former president continues to regurgitate his big lie that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. And through his daily statements released on Twitter by his spokesperson Liz Harrington, Trump claims that the election was rigged even though President Joe Biden defeated him in both the electoral and popular vote over nine months ago. Trump hasn’t changed, and he’d burn this country down rather than admit that he lost the election.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
