Why Twitter Hasn't Banned President Trump (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Amid vocal calls for the company to act, Twitter today offered its first explanation for why it hasn't banned President Donald Trump -- without ever saying the man's name. "Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society," the company said in a blog post. "Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions." In its blog post, Twitter reiterated its previous statement that all accounts still must follow the company's rules. The statement seemed to leave open the possibility that it might one day take action against Trump's account, or the accounts of other world leaders who might use the platform to incite violence or otherwise break its rules. "We review Tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly," it said. In response to the claims that Twitter doesn't ban President Trump because he draws attention -- and ad revenue -- to the company, Twitter said: "No one person's account drives Twitter's growth, or influences these decisions. We work hard to remain unbiased with the public interest in mind."

Comments

Because they are waffling on own standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the GOP lately

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter hasn't banned Donald Trump because he has done nothing to warrant banning.

Being an assclown with opinions that you don't like is not a justification for banning someone. Otherwise the Internet would be quite empty.

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[mentil]

Yeah, nuclear war threats should be issued via SoundCloud or Tindr. Accusations of crossed boundaries via MySpace, and threats of suicide via Diaspora.
Too soon?

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[RedK]

Can you link said tweet ? Of course you can't since he never threatened nuclear war.

He just factually stated that the US nuclear arsenal is both functioning and bigger than a certain other country's which is both unproven and smaller.

Stating facts is not a threat.

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[RedK]

The implicit message is literally "The US' nuclear arsenal is one of the biggest in the world and proven to work". It's a simple fact. You can't even deny this fact. That's it.

Reading more than that into it says more about you than it does him.

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[Luckyo]

Actually, most reasonable people have no clue what he thinks. That's one of the main reasons why he has accomplished this much.

We do have many people who do claim to be mind readers however. Which says nothing about Trump, and everything about such people.

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[naubol]

The implicit message is literally "The US' nuclear arsenal is one of the biggest in the world and proven to work". It's a simple fact. You can't even deny this fact. That's it.

Reading more than that into it says more about you than it does him.

We should infer nothing from his choosing to mention this particular fact? Just how stupid do you think we are?

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[Hal_Porter]

Eternal September really did turn out to be eternal.

Eh, it's not all bad. Yesterday I managed to convince a few Americans that the Wombles were a real youth movement in the UK in the 80's.

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[Hal_Porter]

Actually in a nuclear standoff pointing out your country has a very large nuclear advantage over a potential attacker is likely to cause that attacker to think again.

And of course Bill Clinton made a very similar statement.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07...

CLINTON'S WARNING IRKS NORTH KOREA
Published: July 13, 1993

TOKYO, July 12- The North Korean Government accused President Clinton today of provoking it with threats of war after he warned that the United States would retaliate if North Korea developed nuclear arms.

The statement by the Communist Government of Kim Il Sung came just hours after it handed over what it said were remains of 17 American soldiers killed in the Korean War.

On his weekend visit to South Korea, President Clinton warned that if North Korea developed and used an atomic weapon, "we would quickly and overwhelmingly retaliate."

"It would mean the end of their country as they know it," he said. 'Rash Act' by U.S.

The North Korean Government lashed back today through its Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Tokyo.

"The United States must ponder over the fatal consequences that might arise from its rash act," the statement said. "If anyone dares to provoke us, we will immediately show him in practice what our bold decision is."

North Korea has denied that it is developing nuclear weapons but has banned inspections of two sites suspected of being nuclear installations. Last month, North Korea backed off from its decision to drop out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but the issue of site inspections was left unresolved. Further talks on the matter are to begin Wednesday in Geneva, where Washington is expected to press North Korea to accept inspections or face consequences that could include economic sanctions.

And so did Obama

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

President Barack Obama delivered a stern warning to North Korea on Tuesday, reminding its "erratic" and "irresponsible" leader that America's nuclear arsenal could "destroy" his country.

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, claimed to have tested a submarine-launched missile last Saturday. A photograph showed the weapon flying out of the sea, although there was no independent confirmation that it had been fired from a submarine, as opposed to a sub-surface platform.

"We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals"
Barack Obama

But North Korea already has between six and eight nuclear warheads that could be mounted on a missile. If the regime does perfect a submarine-launched system then it would, in theory, be able to launch a nuclear attack on the American mainland. This would require a submarine being able to sail within missile range of the US.

Mr Obama gave warning of the possible consequences. "We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals," he told CBS News. "But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, [South] Korea."

Mr Obama said that America was improving its own missile defences. "One of the things that we have been doing is spending a lot more time positioning our missile defence systems, so that even as we try to resolve the underlying problem of nuclear development inside of North Korea, we're also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low level threats that they're posing right now," he said

Full marks to Obama for pointing out that a single 50's era ICBM launched from North Korea is very likely to be intercepted given current US missile defences as well as pointing out that the US could level the whole country, i.e. that MAD applies even if you can build enough missiles to get one through.

Of course when Clinton and Obama did it th

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[GameboyRMH]

On the other hand, it's either intellectual lazy or indicative of topical ignorance to yell "SAUCE OR FAKE!" in response to references to mainstream news closely related to the topic at hand. But here you go:

Original poster of video Trump retweeted was banned:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec...

Trump has engaged in harassing behavior that others have been banned for:

https://www.vox.com/culture/20...

Twitter's newsworthiness defense, pretty much reiterated in TFA:

https://www.recode.net/2017/9/...

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[RedK]

Your way of thinking seems to be that (a) Kim is unaware that the US has a large nuclear arsenal, (b) that there is literally no other response Trump could have made but to point that out to him (c) the president has a particular response he's looking for from Kim in response to this presumably new information.

Since I believe none of these are true

I feel you are simply unable to make accurate analysis of anything.

(a) Kim stated something to boast of North Korea's might. As North Korean and other dictators are prone to do.

(b) Trump simply stated a simple fact to put him in his place. There really was no other answer, as DPRK pretending to have any relevence in any arms race is laughable.

(c) Trump doesn't care what "Rocket boy" does moving forward, so long as he stops playing with his toys over our allies' countries.

I feel your issue is you want this to be a negative for Trump. You really feel that the man can't do anything right, and thus you put negative spin on everything, and you assume everything he does is out of malice against you.

Re:Because they are waffling on own standards

[RedK]

Right there is your problem. Of course there were other responses Trump could have made.

Well he could have done the Clinton-Bush-Obama method of sending them money, but obviously 20 years of doing that shows it's not a good solution.

And it's not like he did any differently than his predecessors, as Clinton and Obama both used the "But ours is bigger" method with North Korea in the past, without it resulting in thermonuclear war (because that would be way one sided and even the DPRK regime knows not to actually do anything). See here for information about how this is not a "Trump thing" :

https://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11574251&cid=55874713

So I don't know what else you propose, Arm chair president ? Ignoring the problem has done nothing, sending money to solve it as done nothing. Might as well just remind little "Rocket Boy" that the US' rockets are bigger and proven to work and leave it at that.

Again, says more about you that you want to spin this negatively. Obviously, you're not really afraid of nuclear war, as you're here on Slashdot instead of hiding in a bunker somewhere.

The more I read about politics on Slashdot, the more I see the damage that CNN/MSNBC and other left "news" is doing to the minds of people.

We all know the reason why

[rsilvergun]

what's crazy isn't that they don't block him, what's crazy is that the things he says have gotten so out there they have to apologize for not blocking him.

Re:We all know the reason why

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing how for some people, their only desire is to silence those they disagree with.

Re:We all know the reason why

[willoughby]

Oh yeah, right. Like if the POTUS can't post on Twitter he'll have no way to communicate with the nation. So taking away his Twitter account would "silence" Donald Trump.

Christ, I only wish it were so.

Re:We all know the reason why

[RedK]

You know, you can just not read his tweets if you don't like what he says ?

Some of us enjoy his candor and his trolling skills.

Re: We all know the reason why

[Luckyo]

Far left and far right as two sides of the same coin here. Most reasonable leftists on the other hand share the opinion of the reasonable right wingers. Let the man speak and let everyone make up their own mind what he says.

Re:We all know the reason why

[Mashiki]

That's not a Trump problem, that's a media problem. More so that media are chasing that "always first" "always sweet-sweet ad revenue" and so on. Welcome to the shitshow that always-on 24hr news media has created, and welcome to the ever increasing irrelevance that the news media has helped create. It also doesn't help that there is very low public trust of the media in general, or that when people point out that they have indeed fucked up, engaged in unethical practices, or whatever else. The media's response is to screech "IT'S NOT US! IT'S YOU!" Queue this up with Journolist, Gamejournopros and so on all pushing narritives, talking points, and so on. Or media outlet's directly handing off their news stories to political parties to make sure that the "story narrative is correct."

Re: We all know the reason why

[Mashiki]

Far left and far right as two sides of the same coin here. Most reasonable leftists on the other hand share the opinion of the reasonable right wingers. Let the man speak and let everyone make up their own mind what he says.

Quite true, though keep in mind just what the definition of "far right" is these days. If you support freedom of speech, hold a view that patriotism is okay, that political correctness has run amok? You're a far-right-nazi in the minds of those far leftists who are extremely loud, and in many cases hold institutional power in many places from media to education. That proof can be seen to the average Trump derangement syndrome, to the shitshow surrounding Lindsay Shepard at Wilfred Laurier. The "reasonable left" is far right in their minds, and has a lot to do with social media creating ideological echo chambers.

Re:We all know the reason why

[RedK]

So you want to ban the man from tweeting because the media in the US only care to push their anti-Trump narrative and thus try to dissect his tweets to make them sound bad/worse instead of reporting actual news ? Maybe instead of removing his freedom to tweet, you should do something about the "Fake News media", like watch actual news instead of CNN/MSNBC.

Re:We all know the reason why

[sound vision]

Sure, you can skip reading the tweets. I do; I've never used the site at all. And if he was just another Twitter troll who could be ignored by staying away from that cesspool, that would be super. The problem is, he is the President of the United States. Ignoring the ramifications of what he does - yes, including on Twitter - isn't really possible if you have to live in the US. Or outside of it, for that matter. Trump tweets about moving the capital of Israel and the next day there are protests in the streets. The body count for that tweet was, I believe, 4 dead Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the alt-right talks about "trolling skills" and pretends it's beyond their comprehension why these people hate America. I couldn't think of a more plain example of the concerns these guys have, and the degree of critical thinking they do. Which are respectively: Nothing important, and none whatsoever.

Re:We all know the reason why

[DNS-and-BIND]

It would, though. It would take away his ability to communicate with the American people directly. Instead everything he said would be filtered by a hostile media that openly backed Hillary in the election. We already have enough problems with left wing media bias coloring our view of the world, we certainly don't need more.

Re: We all know the reason why

[Cyberax]

And also selling out your country for a 10% tax cut to foreign hostile powers. Just read the Wolff's book.

Re: We all know the reason why

[AmiMoJo]

The problem with his tweets are that his unfiltered, unpresidential and undiplomatic outbursts might start a war or have some severe economic consequences. It's a perfect demonstration of why people with that much power are usually more restrained and careful about what they say.

Re: We all know the reason why

[Luckyo]

I know right? If only we could stop with the freedom of speech bullshit and just have a right to silence those we disagree with.

So, NKVD?

Re:We all know the reason why

[sound vision]

As the leader of the world's most powerful military, I think the President's agency is a little more consequential than a random Palestinian's. I make no excuses for Palestinians who want to screw up Palestinian affairs. (Whether that's what was happening with the protest is another question, which is irrelevant here.) But I make even less excuses for an American who wants to screw up Palestinian affairs. If the President didn't understand that his tweet would probably lead directly to Palestinian and Israeli deaths (not to mention the long-term geopolitical fallout), he needs to be replaced by someone competent. If he didn't care, he needs to be replaced by someone responsible.

I've noticed the Trump apologists like to draw comparisons between Trump and the bottom of the barrel - random Palestinian farmers, dipshit celebrities, internet trolls. Our leaders need to be held to a higher standard and their agency needs to be used to better effect than those guys. Until that happens, the country's long decline will only be accelerated.

What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[Jarwulf]

I understand a lot of people don't like him but its not like he makes random posts with the n word or anything like that.

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[walterbyrd]

How many people on twitter have threatened to kill Trump? Should they all be banned?

BTW: when has Trump ever threatened to kill anybody? Be specific.

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[pz]

He called Hillary Clinton a traitor. Treason is punishable by death.

He also famously stated, "If she gets to pick her judges: Nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know. But I tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”

He has called for the death penalty to be used on specific people (NYC truck terrorist) and on general classes of people (those who kill policemen).

Do we need to go on?

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[RedK]

So what you're saying is he's pro constitution and pro law enforcement. And you think that's bad ?

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[Frosty Piss]

Even Slashdot filters the "n" word...

But skank, cunt, whore, fag, queer, penis, wop, beaner, white trash, and lezbo all seem just fine.

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[Ichijo]

Let's test your reading comprehension. What do you think he meant by, "Nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is."?

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[RedK]

He meant what the constitution says and it was strictly in the context of the judiciary trampling constitutional rights. If the governement gets out of line and tries to ban guns/take away guns, that's what the 2nd amendment is for.

AKA, if Hillary nominates anti-2nd judges, the 2nd amendment is there to protect said 2nd amendment rights to begin with.

The full context :

Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick --if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know. But I'll tell you what, that will be a horrible day, if -- if -- Hillary gets to put her judges in.

You're saying you're against using your 2nd amendment rights when the governement threatens said rights ? So you're anti-constitution I take it.

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[Ichijo]

You're saying you're against using your 2nd amendment rights when the governement threatens said rights ?

Correct, the 2nd amendment is for self defense, not for influencing public policy (i.e. terrorism).

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[dzelenka]

"Correct, the 2nd amendment is for self defense, not for influencing public policy (i.e. terrorism)."

Whoa! You mean the framers of the constitution were against using guns to influence public policy!?!? ... like the "taxation without representation" policy?

Re:What exactly has Trump done to deserve a ban?

[RedK]

Correct, the 2nd amendment is for self defense, not for influencing public policy (i.e. terrorism).

So if the Governement repealed the 1st amendment, and then Governement forces tried to batter down your door and kidnap you in the middle of the night because you said something that was disapproved by "The Party", you wouldn't use your guns in self defense ?

Same for 2nd and the Governement trying to take away your guns ?

Then I'm sorry to say you're anti-constitution my friend. Maybe you just don't understand the concept of the Four Boxes of liberty :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

No rules

[AK Marc]

Twitter rejects its own rules. The Twitler in Chief is the best advertisement they could have. They'd never shut him down, he's making them millions. Money trumps contracts or ethics.

Re:No rules

[Mashiki]

Not true in the least, Twitter has ethics of a sort. But those ethics only support a particular view point, and in this case Trump feeds the people who are screeching that "Trump's goin' down, really now, any time, RUSSSIA RUUUUUSSSSIIIIIIIAAAA!" If they were being truly ethical, they would have banned terrorist groups that use it, or banned black bloc and antifa members who openly supported, promoted, or engaged in violence. Instead you've got multiple cases where the people who were victimized by them were banned.

Just remember who their "trust and safety council" is, and it suddenly becomes very clear what form of ethics and viewpoint they're going with.

A Good Reason NOT to Ban Trump

[DERoss]

I believe it is very important to expose the jackass for what he is and not to hide him. Hiding Trump's mutterings would be far more dangerous to our democracy than anything he tweets.

Re:A Good Reason NOT to Ban Trump

[Z80a]

That could be said about pretty much anyone on the platform.
Better to murder the bad ideas in an easy accessible place rather than sweeping under the rug and letting em grow in a platform where no opposition will be found.

Becasue Gab.ai & people are sick of censorship

[walterbyrd]

People are getting tired of twitter's extremely biased censorship.

Gab.ai is a real alternative. Trump has over 40 million followers. Twitter is already hurting.

If Trump leaves, how many people will follow Trump over to Gab.ai?

Re:KICK hIM OFF NOW

[walterbyrd]

I hope you are trolling.

The only KKK friendlies in the government have all been democrats. Robert Byrd was a klansman.

The democrats and the KKK were one and the same until the KKK was effectively dismantled in the 1960s.

Trump has never supported any racist group. And Trump was never considered racist before he ran for president.

Why is it racist to defend our borders against illegal immigration? Mexico certainly defends their borders. Is Mexico racist?

Re:We should lock him up, twitter is irrelevant.

[walterbyrd]

I hope you are trolling. I would hate to think anybody could be that ignorant.

Horsefeathers

[IonOtter]

There is Donald J. Trump's personal account, and then the POTUS account.

Ban Trump's personal account, and force him to use the POTUS account.

Twitter Rules on Violence and Physical Harm

[nsaspook]

This policy does not apply to military or government entities.
https://blog.twitter.com/offic...

Re:KICK hIM OFF NOW

[Anonymous Coward]

"Trump was never considered racist before he ran for president"

The hell he wasn't. The complaints have been many over the years about his unwillingness to have black tenants, for example.

The Verge

[Grieviant]

Exactly the kind of bullshit article I've come to expect from The Verge, as they continue to push far-left clickbait in a desperate attempt to remain relevant. They're approaching the level of BuzzFeed at this point. What's incredible is that anyone continues to pay attention to the ham-fisted Trump condemnations that are now the bread and butter of these publications, and apparently the only kind of article they're capable to producing. Online journalism has become so lazy it's almost unbelievable.

Thanks for making the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you wish it were so, thanks for making GP's point again.

You and the rest want to deny everyone you disagree with any platform to speak, don't give us this hypocritical BS. We've seen your playbook and the rules in it only apply to other people. We know about the heckler's veto and we're not buying this crap. You don't give a single real damn about anything but having power.

If you can't take disagreement, then we're just going to disagree even louder until you grow up or get lost.

Be Careful What You Wish For

[OffACough]

You can argue a lot about what Trump says, but it is still foolish to believe that it serves the goal of a transparent republic to silence anyone, espececially the guy the runs 1/3 of the Federal government and the worldâ(TM)s most powerful military. If he talks shit, let him. If he makes an ass out himself, so be it. Are you really so naive as to think that it serves any purpose to keep those tendencies bottled up or limit the outlets for them?

Re:We should lock him up, twitter is irrelevant.

[king neckbeard]

A foreign hostile adversary wants only to harm our country.

Hostile foreign countries don't matter that much anymore, at least outside of threatening nuclear conflicts, and the Clintonites are willing to push us into nuclear war with Russia instead of admitting that they ran a shit campaign. Hostile corporations are a far bigger problem, be they foreign or domestic, and are a far bigger problem even regarding Trump.

A traitor harms our country on behalf of the hostile foreign adversary which controls his actions, as Russia controls Trump.

Russia doesn't control Trump. Trump doesn't even control Trump. Russia did not want Trump. Nobody wants Trump, not even Trump. Russia wanted NOT-Clinton, and they had quite a few legitimate reasons for it.

Pull your head out of your ignorant goddamn ass. You idiots, who can't realize that the organizational nature of political power has fundamentally changed, are so caught up in your nationalism bullshit that you whine about Russia ties when the CEO of EXXON-GODDAMN-MOBIL is touted as a Russian agent instead of an oil baron, while Trump assuages his detractors' concerns just a bit by arming the anti-Russian neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

I believe that Trump should face the death penalty. I think that most of his administration should as well, as well as the majority of congress. But I'm not dumb enough to not realize that the Russia talk has always been a distraction from the real issues that created Trump in the first place.

Re:Threatening nuclear war to distract from treaso

[Mashiki]

Donald Trump threatens nuclear war on Twitter in order to distract from his obvious treason.

Trump threatens nuclear war...with words...which were mocking a tinpot dictator. That same dictator on the other hand who's country has kidnapped women from S.Korea and Japan and pressed them into harems for the military and senior officials of the government. That has fired missiles over Japan, and has Japan on edge enough that not only are they considering a full or partial rewrite of article 9 - that's the section that says they can't have a pro-active military, only self-defense. That they're also considering going nuclear as well, and people are supportive of it. But Trump's the problem...

Re:KICK hIM OFF NOW

[DNS-and-BIND]

He got an award from the NAACP. He was never a racist before he ran for president. Hell, Trump was invited to Matt Laurer's infamous misogynist dinner party. That's not something that the media elites do to a disgusting outsider. You had to be one of their own to get into that room.

Trump's public statements aren't tha to understand

[raymorris]

Decades ago, before he got into politics, I studied Trump quite a bit. I read all his books, which explained his thinking although ghost writers wrote the words. I've paid more attention since he started wading into politics and making some outrageous statements. He's not that complicated and his major ideas have been written about extensively.

When he makes public statements, keep in mind he LOVES to get press, he craves publicity. Good press or bad press it doesn't much matter, he just wants to be in the news. Raising his profile both advances his business / agenda and simply feels good for him. There were 16 Republican candidates who were generally more classically qualified than him, yet he got all the attention, and that's a big part of what won him the presidency.

He also loves HUGE, and spectacular! People joke about him always saying everything is going to be "yuge", the biggest, the best ever, and that joke is because he actually does that. He builds hotels huge, with gold plated stuff everywhere. That's his personality. He loves the biggest, the best, going to extremes - and then emphasizing the "yuge" in his PR.

There are a few other things, but those two go a long way to understanding whatever Trump says publicly.

Re:KICK hIM OFF NOW

[jrumney]

The guy who thought "I used to think the Klan were OK, until I found out they smoked pot" was a funny thing to say in reply to being asked what he thought of the KKK in the context of a confirmation hearing, which eventually led to a Republican majority committee rejecting his nomination as a federal judge? No, never.

Re:Becasue Gab.ai & people are sick of censors

[Brulath]

I'm Australian, so not tied to either of the USA's major political parties, but it doesn't take more than a brief skim of the main page to know that gab.ai is heavily republican leaning; the articles there currently are overtly focused on discrediting democrats. It's often quite complicated to dissect censorship or coverage and determine whether it's biased or not; our local public broadcaster was audited recently(ish) and turned out to be neutral, even though one side was utterly convinced it was extremely biased towards the other. If I were worried about a platform being biased I'd take a long hard look at my own views, and the views of those around me, to make sure I wasn't falling victim to something like the False Consensus Effect.

It's probably fairly neutral, overall.

Re:Becasue Gab.ai & people are sick of censors

[RedK]

Gab.ai is a social media network, it's not a news site. They also do not censor anyone. There is no republican lean. If you want to follow democrats on Gab.ai, you can do so, and your feed will be democrat leaning.

Unlike Twitter, they don't go out of their way to ban republicans and other right wing folk though.

Re:Trump's public statements aren't tha to underst

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to be a mind-reader to gain an understanding of how someone thinks or what his or her personality is like from a large enough sample of that person's thoughts, e.g. writing.
 
For instance, your post was a large enough sample for me to understand that you're an asshole.

God not that misinfo again

[aepervius]

Look getting ur-old information and touting it as if it was recent is about as misinforming as it goes. Yes there were democrats clansmen, just like the slave party was democrats more than 150 years ago. But that does not mean it has ANYTHING to do with democrats of today ! In fact 1) Byrd denounced his KKK affiliation long ago. And since the 60ies there has been the "southern" strategy where the republican simply scooped up all the racist disenfranchised and abandoned by the democrats. Really, who is more to blame , those who supported racist 60 years ago but then saw the light and abandoned them with the civil right events, OR, those who decided to scoop those racist up and build a political force on their resentment to win up those southern state ? As for trump being considered racist before he ran for president, he was a BIRTHER. That is nuff said. Whoever modded you interesting is trolling.

Re:Trump's public statements aren't tha to underst

[PopeRatzo]

Let's test your mind reading skills. I'm thinking of a number. What number is it?

It's not quite the same. A better comparison would be tweeting, "I'm thinking of the number six. Can you guess what number I'm thinking of?"

When someone tells you what they're thinking - when they communicate directly in their own words, it's best to believe them.

Re:Trump's public statements aren't tha to underst

[Anonymous Coward]

Decades ago, before he got into politics, I studied Trump quite a bit. I read all his books, which explained his thinking although ghost writers wrote the words. I've paid more attention since he started wading into politics and making some outrageous statements. He's not that complicated and his major ideas have been written about extensively.

When he makes public statements, keep in mind he LOVES to get press, he craves publicity. Good press or bad press it doesn't much matter, he just wants to be in the news. Raising his profile both advances his business / agenda and simply feels good for him. There were 16 Republican candidates who were generally more classically qualified than him, yet he got all the attention, and that's a big part of what won him the presidency.

He also loves HUGE, and spectacular! People joke about him always saying everything is going to be "yuge", the biggest, the best ever, and that joke is because he actually does that. He builds hotels huge, with gold plated stuff everywhere. That's his personality. He loves the biggest, the best, going to extremes - and then emphasizing the "yuge" in his PR.

There are a few other things, but those two go a long way to understanding whatever Trump says publicly.

One of the other things being that Trump is a winner, Trump is always a winner, no matter what the facts say, no matter if the photographs show that the size of his inauguration crowd was pitiful, it was actually millions strong, the biggest in history because Trump is ALWAYS a winner. One of the easiest ways of getting on Trump's bad side seems to be to call this into question. As for what won him the presidency, it wasn't just that he got all the attention, it was that a large portion of the electorate judges candidates by charisma, entertainment value, looks and superficiality, not by competence and whether they think this person can actually deliver. Trump's public record on business competence is laughable, his habit of cheating his contractors out of their pay is a matter of public record, all this is easily discovered if you just bothered to run a simple web search and it cast severe doubt upon how likely he was to deliver what he promised but the electorate ignored that because Trump is 'charismatic', 'entertaining' and because he's a 'businessman'. I didn't even have to run a web search to find out the guy had bankrupted several Casinos, I already knew. What kind of business wunderkind bankrupts not just one Casino but a whole string of them? ... and why would anybody in their right mind think such a man is fit to lead their country?

Re:We should lock him up, twitter is irrelevant.

[king neckbeard]

What is "wrong with me" is that I see dipshits like you obsessed over seeing a blurry shadow of a drop of corruption, when there is an ocean of corruption in 8K available. If you think what Trump has done regarding Russia is treason, and you are intelligent enough to recognize that a corporation can be just as much as threat as a nation state, then you'd have to conclude that the rivers should be flowing with the blood of our domestic oligarchs. And I wouldn't disagree.

But you are obsessed with a fraction of the real issues, because you're too stupid to realize that they are pointing to the only sliver of corruption that doesn't instantly damn them as well. Trump goes down easy if you aren't invested in protecting the status quo, and the corruption within it that allowed Trump to win in the first place.

Damning only Trump is a much harder battle, and gets less accomplished, so there's no reason that our political goals should be as unambitious as yours.

Re:KICK hIM OFF NOW

[Anonymous Coward]

We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Seriously, the one of the things that Donald Trump has been known for is racial divisiveness, going back decades.

Perhaps Donald Trump's first claim to fame, when he was in his 20s in the 1970s, was being sued by DOJ for violations of the Fair Housing Act for discriminating against tenants on race. The infamous lawyer Roy Cohn was brought on for that case, and Trump launched a ridiculous $100 million counter suit.

In 1989 there was the case of the Central Park Five, where 5 black and latino teens were accused and convicted of brutally raping a white woman in Central Park. In response, Trump ran full page ads in the NYC newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty for New York, referring to muggers and murderers and pretty clearly alluding to the Central Park Five for the cause of execution. Turns out that those black and latino teenagers were railroaded, the police extracted false confessions, and they were wrongly convicted, as confirmed 14 years later by DNA evidence and the capture of the actual rapist, Matias Reyes. Of course, Trump never backed down when confronted more recently with the truth that the political crusade of his earlier years was tainted by false convictions heavily bogged down by racial undertones, and refused to even accept that the Central Park Five were wrongly convicted.

Then there is Trump's more recent claim to fame as being the main champion of the utterly ridiculous conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not actually born in America but Kenya instead and thus was an illegitimate president. If I have to try to walk through the racism pouring through that hogwash, then it really isn't worth bothering because you won't read it anyway. Especially when you consider that Obama's original presidential rival, John McCain, literally was not born in any of the States proper within the United States, but rather the Panama Canal Zone, where his Navy Officer father was stationed. There was never any serious movement to consider McCain an illegitimate presidential candidate on the grounds of not being a naturally born American, despite the circumstances of McCain's birth being on much less clear legal grounds than those of Obama.

Do note that none of this includes the racial issues surrounding Trump in his more recent political run and what he has done as president.

And for a kicker, Fred Trump, Donald's father, was arrested after a KKK riot in Queens in 1927.

Censoring Trump would kill Twitter

[bradley13]

"No one person's account drives Twitter's growth..."

That's true, because Twitter has no growth. The number of users flattened out about two years ago - any growth since 2015 is minimal, and possibly faked. Meanwhile, Twitter continues to bleed money. Twitter is in a slow-motion death spiral, and desperately hoping that someone - anyone - will buy it.

Twitter doesn't dare block Trump's account, because they could instantly lose all Trump followers as users. Twitter currently has around 300 million users. Trump has 46 million followers. So they could lose more than 10% of their users in one blow, and that would be the beginning of the end.

Re:Trump's public statements aren't tha to underst

[Solandri]

Good press or bad press it doesn't much matter, he just wants to be in the news. Raising his profile both advances his business / agenda and simply feels good for him. There were 16 Republican candidates who were generally more classically qualified than him, yet he got all the attention, and that's a big part of what won him the presidency.

This right here is IMHO the problem with society today. Not Trump. It's the asinine media which turns inanity into a superstar simply because they value flamboyance over substance. And the public which just eats this stuff up.

Trump being elected President is a symptom, not the problem. The proper reaction to someone being an idiot is to ignore them. Not to post a video of them on Facebook or YouTube just so you can comment "OMG can you believe this guy?" and be the first one to collect a million likes.

Re:Trump's public statements aren't tha to underst

[Aussie]

So your saying he's Zaphod Beeblebrox ?

Re: Trump's public statements aren't tha to unders

[koomba]

Except in this case it's not just random footage of some obscure person that someone took the time to upload and call attention to it.

He is the POTUS, so for better or worse, things he says do matter, they can Haber consequences, and in fact already have. And he voluntarily, enthusiastically even, shares his largely unfiltered, stream of consciousness thoughts to at the very least his 50(?) million twitter followers.

So he is the one that brings attention to it, that screams for attention, because that is what he craves most. He seems to desperately want it all the time, that and always having to be the BEST at everything in the world, smartest guy in the world, BIGGEST button, most votes, etc, etc, etc.

This is how he's always been, it's plain to see going back decades for anyone that takes even a cursory look at his life. No one should be surprised he's this way as president. All those people assuring us he would suddenly "pivot" to a less angry, boisterous, raging ego maniac and be a completely different person were completely deluding themselves that he would do anything of the sort.

Re:KICK hIM OFF NOW

[Mordaximus]

Trump has never supported any racist group.

In politics being the only person to not instantly condemn a violent and racist hate attack is pretty much defined as "support".

Being the only person to selectively condemn a violent and racist hate attacks certainly earns him said title. To wit, none of the mass violence of the past year perpetrated by a white person was labeled terrorism, where as most done by non-whites were instantly called so. Perhaps he only does so to push his "wall" and immigrant agenda, nonetheless, it's a pattern.

Re:Becasue Gab.ai & people are sick of censors

[jrumney]

There is no republican lean. If you want to follow democrats on Gab.ai,

The site's icon is Pepe the fucking frog. The notion that this is an unbiased site where you can have a democrat leaning feed if you want it is laughable.

Elected world leaders play a critical role in that

[GrandCow]

"Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation"

OK. I can get behind that. Elected leaders have a bigger say than just some scrub. Their influence is more impactful, so they should be given some leniency on what they say.

If their views are so important that they are allowed around the rules, why are they allowed to delete their tweets then? I don't mean 10 seconds after they clicked post and saw they made a massive spelling error. I mean why is Trump allowed to go back and retroactively delete every tweet he made praising people he backed but then lost their elections?

Fuck you Twitter. You are full of shit. The only reason you haven't blocked our retard in chief is that he keeps views coming to you for those sweet advertising dollars.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Becasue Gab.ai & people are sick of censors

[RedK]

The site's icon is Pepe the fucking frog. The notion that this is an unbiased site where you can have a democrat leaning feed if you want it is laughable.

Pepe is bi-partisan. Pepe is used by everyone. You just mean progressives don't like Pepe because Hillary Clinton hated pepe and the SPLC dubbed it a hate symbol out of sheer ignorance of Internet culture. Progressives are just the radical wing of the Democrats after all. I'm sure you're a much more sensible liberal, not someone who thinks a cartoon frog used in memes is a hate symbol.

Re:Becasue Gab.ai & people are sick of censors

[Mashiki]

The site's icon is Pepe the fucking frog.

If you think a "cartoon frog" is such a big symbol of something, all you're doing is showing just how partisan you are and how much you absolutely have to believe the talking points that were presented to you. Because if you question it, then you're no longer part of the club are you?

Re:Threatening nuclear war to distract from treaso

[Mashiki]

"He's better than Kim Jong Un" is such a bad defense that it could only be used for Trump...

Well your other option was "Can we drone this guy?" - Hillary Clinton, on the implication that she wanted to blow up the Ecuadorian Embassy, in the UK to kill one person who was making her look bad. That actually makes her just as bad as him, Trump on the other hand? Right...

Yeah, that basically makes most politicians better then Kim Jong Un. I realize this is an awfully low bar in the first place, but let's try to keep the stupid to a bare minimum.