Trump threatens social media outlets with regulation, closure after fact check added to tweet

President Trump on Wednesday morning ratcheted up his feud with social media platforms, threatening to “close them down” a day after Twitter fact-checked a pair of the president’s tweets on mail-in voting. 

“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016.”

….happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020

The president’s comments come a day after he accused Twitter of “stifling FREE SPEECH.”

The move by the social media giant to fact-check the president was a first for the platform, which has received a growing amount of flak about how it deals with misinformation and false statements on its website.

On Trump’s tweets, the platform placed warnings, noting that the president’s claim that California would send mail-in ballots to anyone living in the state was false. Twitter, in its fact-check, also pointed out that Trump himself voted by mail in the Florida Republican presidential primary this year.

Several states already utilize widespread mail-in ballots, including Oregon, Utah and Nebraska.

Twitter also received criticism from the president’s reelection campaign.

“We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters. Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility,” Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, said.

In response, a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill, “These Tweets contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”

Later Wednesday, Trump promised “Big action” against Twitter.

Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct. Big action to follow!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 27, 2020

Last weekend, before Twitter’s fact check and the subsequent push back from the president, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was considering the creation of a panel to review anti-conservative bias on social media platforms.

“Left-wing bias in the tech world is a concern that definitely needs to be addressed from our vantage point, and at least exposed [so] that Americans have clear eyes about what we’re dealing with,” a White House official told the paper.

Updated at 10:39 a.m.