Did January 6 Justify Trump's Twitter Ban?

with John McWhorter

On January 8, 2021, two days after the January 6 riot at the Capitol, Twitter banned Donald Trump—who was still the sitting president—from the platform. This was surely the most controversial decision the company had ever made. In some sense, Twitter has been living in its shadow ever since. To those who opposed it, the decision was clear evidence that Twitter leadership, like most of Silicon Valley, was eager to put its thumb on the scale on behalf of the Democrats, at least publicly.

A year and a half later, Trump’s Twitter ban was apparently still on people’s minds, because John and I received a question about it for our June 2022 subscriber-only Q&A session, which is where this clip originated. I feel about it now the way I felt about it then: Twitter was 100% wrong to ban Trump. His statements, no matter how inaccurate, did not rise to the level of incitement. And even if they did, who were the leaders of Twitter to decide that? That’s a legal question, one that, if it had any validity, would have been litigated in the courts. Instead, a handful of unelected Silicon Valley executives decided that the president of the United States should not have access to the same means of communication available to any other person in the world with an internet connection. And they did so in the name of preserving democracy!

Trump’s opponents may paper over the more embarrassing questions about free speech raised by this sorry incident and point to the necessity of avoiding another January 6. But that is the ends justifying the means. That logic can be used to rationalize anything, including shutting down the accounts of liberals who question the legitimacy of elections in states with more stringent voter ID laws.

As I say at the end of this clip, it happened to be the case that Silicon Valley leaders were largely left-of-center, making it more acceptable for Twitter to do what it did. Now, a year after that conversation, with Elon Musk in control of Twitter and Trump’s account reinstated, the political balance of power in Big Tech has shifted. If Trump decides to start tweeting again to his 86.6 million followers, it’s unlikely that anyone will stop him. The anti-Trump camp will actually have to change the minds of potential Trump voters, and “Orange Man bad!” isn’t going to cut it. They’ve had years to hone their arguments and strategies. If Trump manages to win the presidency in 2024, it will be hard to say he didn’t earn it.

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This clip is taken from a subscriber-only Q&A session. For access to Q&As, comments, early episodes, and a host of other benefits, click below and subscribe.

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GLENN LOURY: Moving on to the next question. This is from Lori M. Last initial is M.

Question for Glenn. After watching the January 6th hearings last night, I'd like you to revisit the question of whether Donald Trump should have a Twitter account. From what you said earlier, in a conversation with John, it appears that we think it's outrageous that a former president and likely future presidential candidate should be denied an account on the most influential political social media platform.

I did say that.

I agree that there should be a high bar for denying an account to such an individual, but do you really believe that there should be no constraints at all on what can be posted?

I didn't say that.

How about the classic “no yelling 'fire' in a theater” constraint? Trump's flat-out lie about the 2020 election being stolen provoked the attempted insurrection on January 6th and continues to drive efforts all over the country to interfere with and delegitimize the next election, which would result in a constitutional crisis or an outright override of the voting results by state legislatures or congressional representatives. Isn't it reasonable for a private company to refuse to allow that platform to be used to aid a coup d'état?

Okay, so there you are. The January 6th narrative. Trump is a threat to American democracy, an existential threat. The case is clear. It was an attempted coup d'état, an insurrection. They tried to seize and interfere with the normal processes of government that would've resulted in the confirmation of Joseph Biden's electoral victory.

Trump was playing around with that. That's the whole point of January 6th. Coup d'état. Do you want to give the general who's getting ready to lead a military insurrection access to the microphone in the country? Do you want to give a political demagogue who's whipping up mobs of people who might run into the street and commit violence access to a megaphone or a platform? Do you want to give a political candidate who you think constitutes a threat to the future of the country access to a microphone?

My answer is yes. My answer is unequivocally yes. Should a convicted murderer be denied a Twitter account because he is a convicted murderer? I don't think so. Who's gonna make these decisions? And what world are we ushering in when we get to censor who gets to speak based upon an assessment of their character or their politics? No.

Incitement to violence? Yeah. “Let's go out and burn that bitch down”? Yeah. That's shouting fire in a crowded theater. But thinking that the result of the election was contrary to what it was that was decided by the people who print newspapers or who count votes, thinking that there was fraud? You're gonna shut somebody up for thinking that there was fraud? Flip the script on that. What about the person who thinks the election was illegitimate because blacks were required to present a driver's license before they could cast a ballot. That person is not allowed to actually question whether or not there was shenanigans? In your very statement, Lori, you say you're not sure that the 2022 elections are gonna be good because local Republican officials have control over the apparatus, and you suggest that they might use it, prompted by Trump, to undermine the election. Should you be banned from being able to say that after an election which Republicans won?

So the idea, the idea that you would take the tribune—that's right, I called Donald Trump a tribune. He stands in for people, people support him, tens upon tens of millions of them support him. He's only a threat because the demos says he might be reelected. That's what makes Donald Trump a threat. He has supporters. He can't go out and call for the army to overthrow the government, but he can go out and say what he's saying about what he's saying. And he can be refuted to that end. So no.

JOHN MCWHORTER: What about the violence, Glenn?

What about it?

It kinda comes down to the stuff we had before. It seems that, in this case, it's not just an opinion. It's an opinion, which within our particular specific circumstances as they happen to have come now, the cocktail that we're swirling around it, there are many people who are willing to commit acts of violence, say they are—and one actually did it—in the name of the things that Trump is saying. He's not calling explicitly for violence. But when he says those things, there are people who are ready to do really insurrectional things. Doesn't that count for anything?

No. There are people who, when Rachel Maddow says something, grab a rifle and go out and shoot Steve Scalise. There are people throughout the summer of 2020, when one or another Black Lives Matter spokesperson would say something, who were willing to go and do horrible things. There are people who were prepared to attack the Congress because they want independence for Puerto Rico. There were Weather Underground who were agitated and encouraged by certain kinds of radical speakers. The Antifa people actually have sources of inspiration that one finds within the wildly progressive Left. Who's gonna decide these things? Who's gonna say, “Oh, if I allow that speech, then his supporters might get overly exercised and they might do a violent thing.”

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I often find myself in this place. How often do you have legislation be affected by things that are past and current? And in this case, I just find myself thinking, yeah, there was the Weather Underground, and I can imagine somebody making a decision then saying, if there had been Twitter, barring certain radical kinds of people from making their statements because of blowing up a building in Greenwich Village.

That kind of leftism went out of fashion, for reasons we've discussed. Now we have that coming from the right. And we have it now. There's a part of me that [thinks] isn't the idea of steering the ship supposed to be that if there's something that is practically at the root of that kind of rage and urge for destruction, that at least temporarily you shut that off. Know that that's not the consistent kind of reasoning that ideal legislation and ideal administrative procedure should seek. I understand the consistency aspect to it.

But when is vigilantism, so to speak, necessary? The grand theme. When is it necessary to just break the rules and do something that we know is right, even if it doesn't exactly fit what we have on the books? It's a question that I don't have an answer to. But I find myself thinking that way in a case like this.

It scares the bejesus out of me that reasonable people think that Twitter should decide that a major political figure should not have access to their platform because they disagree with his politics. That terrifies me.

Not his politics. It's that he would be happy to see yahoos overthrow the government in the name of a lie and in the name of his own monomanical self-image.

Okay. I'm not going to dispute the wildly hyperbolic character of that statement. I mean, the last sense of Lori's question here is, isn't it reasonable for a private company to refuse to allow their platform to be used to instigate a coup d'état? Is Trump 2024 the road to a coup d'état?

It's rather clear that he wouldn't mind if there were one. Maybe that's not enough. Trump would not have minded if things had gone further on January 6th. I think we can say that. At no point has he ever expressed that he's glad that things calmed down, and he's given little winks that he liked the way the whole thing went. He wouldn't have minded.

I'm not going there, John, with you, to parse that. I'll just say this. That's a good reason not to vote for him. That's not a good reason to keep him from talking.

If everybody were in a village, if there were 150 people, and this is somebody who stands up on a hill and whips people up to do terrible things, would you be in favor of shutting that man up? Because that's what Twitter is. It makes us a village. Would you be in favor of saying, "It's time for you to stop having these things where all these people sit at your feet and you whip them up into doing terrible things. You shut up. Stop getting up on that hill. We're not letting you get up on there anymore"?

I'm not sure how to respond, because I can't remember whether it's the negative or the positive. I would not be in favor of shutting up the person. Incitement in the crowded theater situation is one thing. But what about somebody on the left? What about somebody who thinks the Supreme Court ought to be packed? What about somebody who thinks the electoral college should be gotten rid of? What about somebody who thinks that you ought to actually literally defund the police? What about someone who thinks that the people shouldn't have to pay their rent? What about a demagogue who has a mass following that threatens to overthrow the capitalist foundations of the country?

Now there are a lot of people who are nodding “yeah, good, good, good, good” to every one of the things that I just said. And God love you. I think I'm maybe married to one of them. But the idea that I'm one of those nine justices sitting up there, or I'm one of these fat cats in a corporate office at the top of one of those tall buildings somewhere managing billions or whatever, and that I would say, “Those people are dangerous. They threaten the foundations of our civilization.”

Actually, I frankly think they do. I think the radical left does threaten the foundation of our prosperity. I think they got their heads far up their butts. I think they're dangerous people. I think if they got anywhere close to power, they'd be a lot worse for this country than was Donald Trump. I'll even say that much. The people who want to get rid of capitalism and the people who want to get rid of the cops and the people who want everything to be free and the people et cetera, et cetera who have political ideas that I disagree with. Suppose they become close to actually getting power.

Right now they're a drag on the Democratic Party. They're actually useful to someone who doesn't like the left program, because they're way too far left. Suppose things change and they come close to getting power. I have to refute them at the ballot box. I have to persuade my fellow Americans that their ideas are wrong. I can't win that fight with them about the future of my country by telling them to shut up. They won't go away. Believe me, you will reap what you sow. It's a step on the road to an unfree society. And just because Silicon Valley happens to be left-of-center just now, you watch out. So no.

Okay. We are moving on. Lori, thanks for the question. I know I'm in hot water now. I know, I know, guys. But I love my country just like the next person, and it's for that reason I'm taking the position I'm taking.

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