Anything can happen during a combination pandemic and election year — even social media sites finally refusing to give a platform to Donald Trump’s lies. After years of dangerous posts, Facebook and Twitter have removed one of Donald Trump’s videos for alleging that children are “almost immune” to the deadly coronavirus. Though the platform has clear guidelines about posting false, harmful information, Kellyanne Conway has another theory about why social media sites are decidedly censoring Trump.
In a Fox News segment, Conway came to the president’s defense to say that removing any of his posts is inherently anti-Trump. "Why do we have the Big Tech overlords telling us what is and is not legitimate on health matters?” she asked, adding, “Twitter, Facebook, many of the forums are already overly anti-Trump. I think what's happened is that the president has over 200 million followers on all of his social media platforms, he has used it in a way no other politician has used it, and they don't like that."
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Conway, Trump’s senior advisor and Top Fearmonger, also stated that she believes this is an election issue, and that tech companies are attempting to interfere with the president's reelection bid. "I think what many of these tech companies are doing now to the president, to conservatives, the shadow banning, the censoring, the selective engagement, is election interference," she said.
But the actual engagement from conservatives and Trump supporters on these apps tell a completely different story. Hashtags like #Trump2020 are alive and well on social media platforms — including on Instagram, owned by Facebook, where it's recently been discovered that a bug in the system has actually been favoring pro-Trump content over Biden content. #Trump2020 currently has over 2.5 million posts on Instagram, and #MAGA has over 5.6 million. On TikTok, #Trump2020 has over 7.5 billion views, and on Twitter, as early as yesterday, the Second Amendment was trending furiously after Letitia James announced that she would be filing a lawsuit to put an end to the National Rifle Association (NRA).
But this is not the first time that Conway has accused a platform of tampering with an election. In 2018, Conway accused CNN of election interference for reporting on sexual misconduct cases against Trump. While Conway claims doing anything that contradicts the president is a plot against democracy, it also stands to mention that Facebook has consistently been pointed to as one of the main reasons that Trump even won the presidency in 2016.
If this is the so-called moral high ground that Conway and the Trump team want to stand on, they may just want to hop in a time machine to stand up against social media election interference that made it possible for him to win in the first place — unless, of course, interference only matters when it isn't to their advantage.
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