President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on social media on Thursday, the White House said, Fox News informed.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday she could not get ahead of the President to explain the purpose and intent of the order, but confirmed it would be coming then.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump warned social media giants that the federal government could “strongly regulate” or “close them down” if they continue to “silence conservative voices,” amid his flaring battle with Twitter after the platform fact-checked one of his tweets for the first time this week.
“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” Trump tweeted. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.”
The President added: “Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”
He later tweeted: “Twitter has now shown that everything we have been saying about them (and their other compatriots) is correct. Big action to follow!”
This comes after Twitter on Tuesday slapped a warning label on one of Trump’s tweets referring to mail-in ballots, cautioning readers that despite the President’s claims, “fact-checkers” say there is “no evidence” that mail-in voting would increase fraud risks and that “experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.”
The President, within minutes of the platform’s labeling, accused Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post,” while adding that the Twitter is “completely stifling FREE SPEECH,” and vowing that “I, as President, will not allow that to happen.”
Twitter’s new warning label was issued even though a Twitter spokesperson acknowledged to Fox News that Trump’s tweet had not broken any of the platform’s rules, and even though some other experts have raised fraud concerns surrounding mail-in voting.
The warning label came after Trump tweeted: “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!!”
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