Kamala Harris, the self-described “top-tier” 2020 candidate whose polling remains wedged between the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang, released her letter to Jack Dorsey on why the Twitter CEO should ban President Trump from the social media platform.
Somehow, it’s even worse than we all expected.
INBOX: Kamala Harris pens formal letter to Jack Dorsey asking him to kick Trump off Twitter, writing “these are blatant threats. We need a civil society, not a civil war. pic.twitter.com/zbC4dKUyEu
— Alex Thomas (@AlexThomasDC) October 2, 2019
The California Democrat’s primary grievance is no mere declaration of “Orange Man Bad.” Sure, she cites a bit about Trump’s “civil war” drivel, but the key of her argument has overtly partisan intentions. Harris calls on Twitter to ban Trump for “targeting” California Rep. Adam Schiff.
Of all the low-hanging fruit spewed by Trump, Harris chooses Trump punching back at the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who’s spent the last two and a half years attempting to end Trump’s presidency by any means necessary.
It’s one thing to make the case, however weak, that Trump’s targeting of journalists or other private citizens are comparable to other cases of high-profile users getting banned by the tech giant. It’s another entirely for a member of the federal government to try and publicly bully a private company into playing politics and ban the leader of the free world for publicly critiquing a leader of his opposition, especially in light of existing court precedent.
While the federal judiciary has never argued that Twitter can’t ban members of government from the platform, the most significant case examining a politician’s role on the platform to date, Knights First Amendment Institute v. Trump, has affirmed that although Twitter is a private company, Trump’s account constitutes a limited public forum. As such, Trump cannot block fellow Twitter users, and presumably other members of government cannot discriminate against other users. Public forum doctrine likely doesn’t bar Twitter from limiting their public forum (in this case, politicians), but denying the public at large the right of access to their president’s speech would set a horribly dangerous standard. Not to mention, this would undermine any veneer remaining that Twitter has a commitment to free speech.
Furthermore, Twitter will never ban Trump for the same reason that Facebook will never ban “fake news.” He’s just too lucrative for the company.
At 48.65 million active users, Americans comprise the overwhelming plurality of Twitter’s global user base. Analysts estimate that Trump is worth some $2 billion to Twitter, and markets hinge so tenuously on his tweets that J.P. Morgan created a “Volfefe” index to price Trump’s Twitter activity into their estimates.
The law has already determined that different rules apply to elected office holders on Twitter, and every practical question concludes with the simple fact that keeping Trump off the platform would wreak havoc on the country.
For Harris to argue that Twitter should jeopardize all of that simply to silence Trump’s political barbs toward Schiff isn’t just irresponsible, it’s evidence that Harris is unfit to defend the First Amendment and her campaign deserves its embarrassing end.
