Donald Trump is resorting to one of his favorite tactics to seek revenge against the two biggest names in social media. Axios is reporting that Trump is planning to announce today class-action lawsuits against both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter boss Jack Dorsey.
The suits will seek to give new life to Trump’s years-long complaints that the tech giants conspired to censor the former president and block his right to free speech. Trump was banned from Twitter and suspended Facebook for his actions in inciting the crowd in a rally the day of the January 6 Insurrection. The Twitter ban is permanent; an independent oversight board upheld the Facebook suspension for at least another two years.
The de-platforming has essentially silenced Trump, preventing him from directly communicating with his base of supporters. It has also prevented him from continuing to spread lies about his election loss to Joe Biden. Some legal experts see it as just another PR stunt meant to fire up the MAGA base by showing that Trump is fighting the perceived censorship from Big Tech.
By filing a class-action lawsuit, Trump will be able to sue the social media companies on behalf of others who claim Twitter and Facebook conspire to muzzle conservatives on their sites. It should be noted that to date, Trump has not offered up any proof that social media shows a clear bias against him or other conservative voices.
Trump is being backed by the America First Policy Institute, a non-profit focused on perpetuating Trump’s policies that is led by former Trump Administration officials Linda McMahon and Brooke Rollins.
The famously-litigious Trump has often threatened to take people to court and even gone through the process of actually filing the paperwork, but as Axios and others note, rarely will he see it through to the end.