Trump to sign executive order about social media amid Twitter spat
US President Donald Trump will today sign an executive order on social media firms, the White House has said.
The move comes after the president became embroiled in a dispute with Twitter, which marked one of his tweets with a fact check warning over its inaccurate claims.
Trump yesterday threatened to shut down social media platforms, complaining they were silencing conservative voices in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.
“We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,” he wrote in a tweet.
However, officials gave no further details about the mooted executive order and it is not clear how Trump could follow through with his threat without new laws passed by Congress.
In a further tweet last night Trump wrote: “Big Tech is doing everything in their very considerable power to CENSOR in advance of the 2020 Election.
“If that happens, we no longer have our freedom. I will never let it happen! They tried hard in 2016, and lost. Now they are going absolutely CRAZY. Stay Tuned!!!”
The row was ignited yesterday when Twitter stamped a fact check warning on one of the president’s tweets for the first time after it was debunked by fact checkers.
Referring to postal votes in the upcoming election, Trump claimed there was “NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent”.
The social media platform placed a warning label on the tweet, allowing users to “get the facts about mail-in ballots”.