We start with the Memorial Day Weekend, where Trump hits the links, fired some salvos over Twitter with MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, pushing the conspiracy theory that he was involved in the death of one of his congressional staffers, and hitting his former Attorney General and Alabama Senate candidate Jeff Sessions, all the while the U.S. approaches 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.
On Memorial Day, May 25th, Trump honored service members combatting the coronavirus by visiting Arlington National Cemetery and Fort McHenry in Baltimore.
Tuesday, May 26th, Trump begins to receive heavy backlash from Twitter for his tweets about Joe Scarborough, resulting in Timothy Klausutis, the widower of Scarborough’s staffer Lori Klausutis, writing a letter to have Trump’s tweets taken down and Twitter responding with an apology in return. Later on the day, the president gets fact-checked by Twitter for the first time ever on two of his tweets about mail-in voting, rebuking his claim that it increases the likelihood of voter fraud.
Wednesday, May 27th, Trump travels down to Cape Canaveral, Florida to witness the first astronaut launch by SpaceX. However, due to poor weather, the launch was scrapped and rescheduled for Saturday, May 30th. Meanwhile, the U.S. death toll from coronavirus surpasses the tragic milestone of 100,000.
Thursday, May 28th, after a couple of days of criticizing social media censorship, Trump signs an executive order eroding the legal protections that social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have enjoyed.
“My executive order calls for new regulations under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to make it that social media that engages in censoring or any political conduct will not be able to keep their liability shield,” Trump said.
And there you have it, a wild week capped off with an executive order that could very well change the future of social media. Who knows? Maybe the goal has always been to get millennials and zoomers to look up from their phones.
