Trump attacks and appeals 'fundamentally misconceived' Twitter block decision Donald Trump should be allowed to block people from his Twitter feed because it is not an official government account, the president’s lawyers have re-argued in a legal appeal. The lawyers are asking that a decision by a subset of the Second Circuit be reviewed by the entire court. Their core argument remains that the @ …
"I'm sure the only guy who ever managed to lose money running a casino"
In all fairness to Trump he could make money on casinos (and reportedly made a lot on Trump Plaza and Trump Marina), but the acquisition of the partially completed Taj Mahal was a disaster and required significant debt to finance its opening - debt that was unlikely to be serviceable given growth in the casino sector in Atlantic City.
While there are a number of issues with how he run the casinos (not paying contractors during construction of the Taj Mahal, reducing staff benefits and regulatory issues around accounting for income to try and meet debt obligations) they all come down to not being able to service the debt on the Taj Mahal. Then a recession came along in the early 90's and meant the debt was no longer serviceable.
Maybe the real lesson is that if you make a bad decision, spread the losses to maximise suffering and keep on doubling down so that when it all goes wrong, everyone suffers?
Can you cite any? There's a case ongoing against Ocasio-Cortez and the team running Tlaib's twitter account responded to a direct request that cited court precedent but didn't go to court, but I haven't found any completed cases in court.
Obviously that's mainly because I'm not sure what to look for :)
>If any other politician can block people from their accounts, why not Trump?
Because he is using it to announce government policy.
Suppose he has another twitter feed that announces tariff increases, tax cuts, new bans on certain companies etc. a few days in advance - but this one is private, run by Trump and available for a mere $M donation.
He has already announced government economic statistics on his twitter ahead of official releases, so investors that follow his twitter feed have a theoretical advantage over any that don't (although possibly face higher mental health medical costs)
give him a choice: he can be treated as a private citizen, allowed to do whatever he wishes with his Twitter and not allowed to claim presidential immunity for anything, or he can be treated as President, and just like every other president to date, his statements are treated as statements from the holder of that office.
He's not special - or he's definitely "special" .....
He doesn't need to be "given" that choice again- he already had it, and made it of his own free will when he chose to run for president. Unless he exercises the same choice and resigns- which he's perfectly free to do any time he likes, but obviously won't (#)- he's bound by the rules of the presidency.
If the snowflake-in-chief doesn't like the consequences of the choice he made, wants to have his cake and eat it, and thinks that the rules shouldn't apply to him, well... tough shit.
(#) At least, not for that particular reason
It would be interesting if the court ruled his account *was* personal - wouldn't that open him up to potential prosecutions for libel, inciting hatred, etc? Also, wouldn't announcing government policy before it was formally announced be tantamount to releasing confidential information?
Being POTUS grants him immunity - perhaps the courts grant his request and then rule that his immunity doesn't extend to his personal account.
"He has already announced government economic statistics on his twitter ahead of official releases"
No, he often makes announcements with statistics that bear little relation to official figures. Just last week he announced that 'the strongest dollar in history'... but the dollar index peak occurred in the 1980s. He regularly announces big expansion in steel industries and the like but when the numbers get scaled back to reality (for 'millions' read 'thousands') they are generally something that was planned years previously (much like Boris and the Boris Bike scheme... planned under Red Ken)
Void of logical or coherent thought, eh?
Hmmm.
(I know...we're not to respond to trolls)
1. Unlike all previous holders of the office, he appears to be using it to enrich himself, by channelling business to resort properties he owns (e.g.: "Next G7 should be at my Florida golf resort")
2. His refugee policy seems to be calculated evil.
3. His "tax cuts" benefit primarily people like him.
4. His trade policy seems...disorganized and random
5. He doesn't seem to be able to find, or keep, good help.
6. And when he does, he doesn't listen to their advice.
Good enough for you?
Look at that hair, it looks like it just came out of a golden shower. Look at that face... oh, better not!
I think we can all agree that despite all the stealing trump is not having it his way, some say that God works in very mysterious ways but I prefer to call it the karma effect.
You cant' cheat karma, not even the master cheater can.
"1. Unlike all previous holders of the office, he appears to be using it to enrich himself"
I think the issue is that he's doing to enrich himself while in office.
Pretty sure most of the Presidents were subsequently enriched by their service to their country.
CIA intelligence briefings for life is worth quite a lot by itself.
The president’s legal argument is inconsistent, illogical, clearly flawed and basically amounts to shouting “but I don’t want to be told what to do.”
And that one sentence accurately and succinctly sums up our current Crybaby-in-Chief.
Icon because, well..you know....
FWIW it was the court that insisted that the block be lifted.
If Trump would limit his use of the service to entirely personal interest (say gardening or gold tips) then he might possibly have a case. But even then not really because Twitter is a public forum.
As for partisanship: this has been Trump's successful modus operandi but it cuts both ways.
Currently for every one of his supporters who think his claims are valid, there are two who think he's a paranoid bullshitter.
But no POTUS speech privileges - he'd need to abide by the same terms and conditions as the citizenry he so fervently claims to be a part of all of a sudden. I haven't read the T&C of the Tweetverse at length but from what I've read generally stuff like inciting violence, blatant racism, and purposeful misinformation with the intent to harm entire populations might gives cause to take restrictive action on offending accounts. If nothing else, they could suspend the whole thing indefinitely for "suspicious acticity" "Failure to monetize" "Flagged as troll, bot or spam account" "Reported as a landing page for botfarmers." "Tweeting too much without following enough people" or the old "Please reset your password for security reasons and set up two factor authentication." loop. If he complains, the response is simply: you wanted this. Yes, /should/, but wouldn't it be fun to see his reaction when he gets the book dropped on him?
Make his own personal version of Fox news. You'd probably just need to overdub the audio with "...and President in Chief Trump has made another fantastic move with his tariffs on China. He's really making America great again!", and swap in whatever he's ranting about today. No fuss.
When the social media companies kick out nazis or commentators they don't like, they're not violating anyone's right to free speech because it's a privately owned platform.
When Twitter, on behalf of President Trump, wants to exclude people from a part of their platform, namely the comments on his account, it's a free speech problem because Twitter it's not a privately owned platform?
I realise it's a little more nuanced than I've stated it but there does seem like a contradiction at play.
The 1st Amendment expressly prohibits the suppression of free speech by the government.Can you guess what the President of the United States is a part of? Go on! Take a wild guess!
There is no nuance here. It's as straightforward as it gets.
I can't tell if you're trying to be funny here or not. The way you've written it you seem to be suggesting that speech by someone in the government – e.g. the president – can't be suppressed. And you say there's no nuance there. lol.
What the 1st Amendment actually says is: "Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;..."
It really doesn't get any more straight forward than that, IMO. Twitter is not Congress; Twitter would be entirely within its rights to suppress Twitler.
The point is that Twitter can do what it wants EXCEPT repress speech at the request of the government. In this case, at the request of the President.
Which the subject of this article.
Er, no. Twitter could certainly repress publication at the request of the government, should it choose to do so. Freedom of the press applies to the owners of the press. If they want to cooperate with the government, they're free to do so.
And the issue at hand here has nothing to do with suppressing any content publication by Twitter.
The issue is that Trump wants to block some people from following and responding to his tweets. The courts have, thus far, ruled that Trump has no right to do that. Those rulings are based on the fact that he's POTUS and he uses his Twitter account in that role.
If Twitter decided to comply with Trump's whims, they could go back to letting him block other users from reading and responding to his tweets. The court rulings say they're not obligated to do so.
ecofeco wrote: "The 1st Amendment expressly prohibits the suppression of free speech by the government.
Can you guess what the President of the United States is a part of? Go on! Take a wild guess!
There is no nuance here. It's as straightforward as it gets."
The first amendment you're referring to begins with, "Congress shall make no law..."
The president != congress and neither he nor Twitter are making a law about what people are allowed to say.
Let's say he gets his way and bans some people from posting on his twitter feed. Those same people are at their liberty to go out in the street and speak their mind, or post on facebook, or on TV, radio or even on their own twitter account.
The first amendment you're referring to begins with, "Congress shall make no law..."The president != congress and neither he nor Twitter are making a law about what people are allowed to say.
However the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment quite (very) broadly. As interpreted it forbids *all* branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial, at both federal and state level) from restricting free speech at all (whether by law, regulation, or other action).
As such, POTUS (acting as POTUS) cannot request that Twitter forbid someone from speaking (or at least, that is how the courts so far have ruled).
While I can't disagree with anything you've written, MJB7, I question the sanity of that line of reasoning. Theirs, by the way, not yours. Yours is clear and logical.
I imagine the same judges which want to be all gung-ho on the first amendment when it comes to people posting vitriol on the President's twitter feed would have strong objections to allowing those same people to exercise their free speech rights by wandering into a courtroom and spouting similar nonsense.
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't follow American politics that closely but what I suspect is that they've let their distaste for the President cloud their judgement, however well justified that distaste may be.
Joe W wrote: "It is not about twitter blocking people from their service, it is the account holder blocking people. Big distinction."
Just to be clear. Unless I'm misunderstanding, it's not that anyone is blocking people from posting on their own account, just from posting on President Trump's. Nor is it President Trump doing the blocking. It is Twitter. It's their platform. Being a private company, they can change their platform so other people can't be blocked from anyone's feed, rendering this whole argument moot.
Now we know the actual reason that Trump wants the G7 at his own property. He can pick and choose who he lets in at his own establishment, regardless of their standing. Macron, for instance, or Trudeau... Not to mention news organizations. And who gets camera time... Who ... the list of what could be controlled due to the owner's rights is endless.
And the cherry on top is all the money Trump gets to make personally...
A couple of points;-
1/ What the hell is this argument doing going through the courts? As far as I know, Twitter is not a government agency and (for good or bad) it has it's own Ts and Cs and it can largely choose what conditions it wants to place on the (let's face it, free!) accounts. If it decides that @theRealFart is a being operated in the interests of a public body, who the hell are the court to decide that Twitter are "wrong" (whether they are or not)?
2/ If @theRealFart IS a private Twitter account as Trumpy says, then considering how it is routinely used to broadcast the ramblings of someone in government office, then how does this square with the attacks that Trumpy made on Ms Clinton during the election (re her use of private email for government business)? And although I appreciate that Farty doesn't care and would just shout a lot until everyone plugs their ears, why are his opponents not making anything of this?
Politics in the UK is completely f*cked-up and is likely to remain so for some time, but thankfully it's not quite as nuts as in good ol' America!
But why are the courts involved at all? If Farty says "Oi, Twitter, stop those peeps telling me I'm a complete spoon" and Twitter say "bugger off, we'll do no such thing", then how can the courts have any juristiction over whether Twitter are right or wrong to do that - it's entirely up to Twitter!
Anyone can read what Trump wrote in his Twitter feed, they just cannot comment on them. What opponents want to do is not attend the "political rally" and listen, like everyone else. They want to attend the rally then loudly piss, moan, pitch a fit, throw things, and make a nuisance of themselves to keep everyone else from hearing what is being said. Then, of course, when they're removed from said metaphorical rally, publicly shit themselves claiming they were "censored", their First Amendment rights trampled by Trump and his storm troopers.
Typical tactic of the progressive left.
San Francisco knows this but continues vomiting the propaganda anyway, because, well, orange man bad. Bad orange man! Bad!
The account doesn't belong to him, as its existence is simply a configuration of Twitter's physical property. If you allow me to rearrange your socks and your bedroom in a square, do you own my socks in my bedroom, no. But you are allowed access subject to my whims. At Anytime you can tell you that you can't use my socks or the box you made out of my socks anymore because those are still my f****** socks.
You never had to let me in your bedroom or use your socks in the first place. If Iyou wanted to tell you that you don't trust me specifically to do something or think it's a good idea , You can still let somebody else because once again it's my room andmy socks.
Whoever owns the server makes the rules and is effective God of that server.
There is no higher authority than that of the owner. Users essentially are guesta in someone else's house. If you don't like the rules roll your own server and post and block anything you want.
Twitter's relationship is analogous.
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