In the aftermath of the Capitol Hill riots, President Donald Trump is facing unprecedented scrutiny unlike he’s ever faced during his time in the White House.
Media reports have accused him of inciting the riots.
Other pundits and lawmakers have called for his removal from office. He’s been silenced on social media. Even former Republican allies have turned on the president.
But a very unlikely ally is rushing to his defense as the end of long week draws near.
Victoria Secret supermodel Emily Ratajkowski spoke out Thursday on behalf of Trump — slamming the ban on the President’s social media channels.
This gives Facebook/tech/Zuck THE MOST POWER. If he can shut the president up/off he can shut any of us up/off
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 7, 2021
Though not everyone on social media agreed with her, she insisted that the move by tech companies to silence Trump will make it easier in the future to censor everyday Americans.
Know this is going to be an unpopular take but seems worth pointing out
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 7, 2021
The move is a reminder of the enormous power that social media platforms currently wield.
Facebook and Instagram said Thursday they will bar Trump from posting at least until the inauguration of Joe Biden.
A 12-hour lockdown of Trump’s Twitter account ended Thursday and the president used his restored account to post a video in which he acknowledged for the first time that his presidency will end soon.
“They no longer have to fear Donald Trump,” said Rashad Robinson of Color of Change, a far-left group. He said Facebook’s action was a way to curry favor with the incoming Democratic president and Congress.
In announcing the unprecedented censorship, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said allowing Trump to use the platform is too great a risk following the attack on the Capitol building Wednesday. Zuckerberg said Trump’s account will be locked “for at least the next two weeks” and possibly indefinitely.
“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg wrote.
Trump has repeatedly harnessed the power of social media as a modern bully pulpit used to circumvent the mainstream media’s spin. Platforms like Facebook have occasionally labeled or even removed some of his posts, but the overall response has failed to satisfy critics who say the platforms have enabled the spread of misinformation.
Twitch, the live-streaming site owned by Amazon and used by Trump’s campaign to stream speeches, disabled Trump’s account until he leaves office, saying it didn’t want to be used “to incite further violence.” Companies outside the social media world also scrambled to take stock of how they’d been used by those who swarmed the Capitol.
E-commerce company Shopify shut down two online Trump memorabilia stores for promoting people or organizations “that threaten or condone violence to further a cause.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email that “it’s incredibly ironic, yet not surprising, that when the President spoke to the country at a critical time Big Tech chose to censor and block him from doing so.”
It was Twitter where Trump was likely to feel the effects most. The company locked his accounts for 12 hours after he repeatedly posted attacks about the integrity of the election. Trump more than a decade ago embraced the platform’s immediacy and scale to rally loyalists, castigate enemies, and spread his messages.
In his video posted on his restored account Thursday, Trump condemned the violence at the Capitol, reversing the stance he took in a video posted Wednesday.
A company spokesman said Twitter could take further action as it kept track of “activity on the ground and statements made off Twitter.”
The platforms continued to face criticism from users who blamed them, in part, for creating an online environment that led to Wednesday’s violence.
Sen. Mark Warner, the incoming chair of the Senate intelligence committee, on Thursday called Facebook, Twitter and Google “collaborators” in Trump’s assault on U.S. democracy. “And their 11th-hour conversion now to suddenly take down Trump’s Facebook or Twitter feed is way too little too late,” the Virginia Democrat said during an Aspen Digital online forum.
The Associated Press contributed to this article