The Press Box - Twitter Bans President Trump

Episode Date: January 9, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker react to the news that Twitter has banned President Trump permanently from their platform. They reflect on Trump’s relationship with Twitter, the media’s reaction to the news, and the timing of the ban. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoeemaker here. David, thank God it's Friday evening. The news is over for the week. We can crack open a beer and what, wait what? Oh, Twitter. My God, that's Jack's music. Twitter, perma band Donald Trump.

Well, I guess we could do one more emergency podcast before we pack it in this week. So Twitter has just published a blog post. explaining why they ban the president of the United States from their platform. There were two tweets today, Friday, that got Trump off the platform. They are as follows, the 75 million great American patriots who voted for me, America first and make America great again, will have a giant voice long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape, or form, triple exclamation point.

that was one. The second one was, to all those who asked, I will not be going to the inauguration on January 20th. We can agree that this was not

Donald Trump's worst work on Twitter. But, David, as Twitter explains, Trump's statement that he will not be attending the inauguration as being received

by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate. Moreover, the use of the words American patriots to describe some of his supporters has also been interpreted

as support for those committing violent acts of the U.S. Capitol. And then they also say plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the U.S. Capitol, geez, and state capital buildings on January 17, 2021. In other words, Donald Trump did a lot of bad stuff on Twitter, a lot of heinous, malicious, awful stuff. and therefore these tweets are what has put him over the top and now he's off the platform. Before we get in the meat of it, and, you know, I feel like obligated to say I don't, I don't, probably shouldn't make light of this anything that's going on right now, but it's Friday night. Who cares? I love that people think that Trump's saying he wasn't going to go to the inauguration is evidence that he has something up his sleeve. but we've seen what he

I mean not to make light of what he has up his sleeve he's got a lot of potential you know I'm sure there's other seditious mobs that he has up his sleeve but the tweet the tweet was basically the language of like in case for all those who asked I will not be attending

Brian Curtis's New Year's Eve party I have better I have a better invitation you know it's like it's the most obvious the most obvious like just like no one wants me there so I'm not I'm just going to I have other stuff going on tweet ever. And if there's anything that shows the depths to which these Trumpites are just brainwash, it's that you could read such a sad tweet as that and think,

well, here comes the big reveal. This is what this whole thing has been building to. And it has to become increasingly more absurd, right? Yeah. Donald Trump loses in court, loses in court, loses in court, loses in Congress. So you keep finding the, okay, where's the trap door that's going to open and Joe Biden's going to fall down it and Donald Trump's going to get another four years. Even a tweet that basically amounts to like this is just a bit of social business. I will not be attending January 20th. Yeah, that is that is really wild. I guess I want to start before we get into Donald, should he have been kicked off or not kicked off, I want to get in the idea of just for a moment of talking about the absolute hell that Donald Trump

has inflicted with this platform long before he became president of the United States. I mean, this is a guy that doesn't use email that is not tech savvy in any way. If you needed proof, see the video of him

dancing to Gloria or his, you know, or listening to the song Gloria before he went on the stage in front of the Capitol the other day. This is like it. This is an analog person who somehow grabbed hold of a tech platform.

Yeah. And used it like almost no president has used any technological platform ever. Yeah. It's wild. I mean, it's very strange, right? I mean, that Trump has almost nothing in common with every other person that you interact with on Twitter. And I think most people interact with on Twitter. Donald Trump is not is not

emblematic of the average not the average Twitter user and not the but certainly not the average Twitter notable not the average Donald Trump is not emblematic of the average Twitter blue check right and yet he is it is impossible to explain Twitter to an alien who came down from outer space without mentioning Donald Trump in the first sentence

right yes he is because hum attached to it. Just entirely fully, he is, he's a symbiotic relationship in so many ways, you know?

And, and, uh, I mean, there's, I feel like this podcast can sort of be one sentence long and it won't be, but I mean,

it's, there's, you know, I have a weird, I sort of ambivalence to this whole thing. It, I feel like they should have done it sooner. Uh,

but it, but doing it now is maybe more, um, I don't know if effective is the right word, but it's a much better sort of kiss off than it would have been at any other point. Because, you know, if you do it in year two

of the Trump presidency, if he went to Gab or Parlor, which shouldn't exist then or just started his own platform or whatever, everyone would have to pay attention to it. Everyone would have to subscribe. Everybody would have to, you know, he's the president. Now no one's ever going to have to listen to him again.

I mean, he'll be spouting off somewhere, but not to the audience that he had on Twitter and not to anything resembling it. I think it's interesting because it was a dream for Donald Trump. Donald Trump always wanted to be in the newspaper. He wanted to be in the Daily News. He wanted to be in the New York Post. And all of a sudden, he could do it himself.

And that's literally the way he thought of Twitter. Kate Nibs wrote a piece for us in 2016, which we'll get into in just a second. But she quoted him saying, and Donald Trump actually wrote this on Twitter, I love Twitter. It's like owning your own newspaper without the losses. So he was in heaven.

All of a sudden, he didn't have to have John Barron calling page six to try to sneak an item in there. He didn't have to deal with the rando journalist who came to Trump Tower and interviewed him for 20 minutes so he could be in the paper, which he loved. He could just do it himself and do it all the time. And it just worked with his brain. you're right. He is not like anybody else we read on Twitter. I don't know that he's particularly good at Twitter for whatever that means. He's just on it all the time and using the power of his office in an awful way to dominate the conversation. It's really, really strange. And it's even stranger, I think, that this era is coming to an end. Because as you say, it's hard to imagine Twitter without Donald Trump. I don't follow Donald Trump.

But I read Donald Trump's tweets all the time because, of course, they just burble up onto my feed. Right. I think one of the things that sort of definitional about Twitter is that there are the people you follow, there are the people that you, whether you have them in a group or whether you like have them bookmarked or you literally type their, you know, you've entered their name into your search bar so many times that they just pop up automatically. the people that you really need to read. And then there are the people who, whether you love them or you hate them, you know that you don't need to follow them because anything of significance that they say will appear on your timeline via retweet,

via comment on that tweet, et cetera. Trump is the most extreme version of that last category, right? Like, it's sort of a miracle that he has a billion followers, because no one actually needed to follow Donald Trump to find out what Donald Trump was tweeting about. Totally.

And I got to say, and I said this on a pod the other day, it's really weird not knowing his thoughts in real time. Yeah. We've only had the experience of this for a couple hours and I guess starting now. But we've had real-time access to this dude's thoughts for more than four years. It's going to, I mean,

talking about aliens and describing Twitter, there is no way to describe the Trump president probably without Twitter in the first sentence of that, right? I mean, they're inextricably linked, and this will certainly be the only time, probably in our lifetime is that we'll have a president who is that just straightforward, I guess, who's like, it is that is on such display?

Yeah, straightforward's kind of a loaded word since he was lying. Right, but that present, I mean, that's sort of like, present is the right word, I think. His, the subcont- just the internet subconscious is just constantly barfing out loud for all of us to read. Yeah, and I find it more frightening that I don't know his thoughts, to be honest. That's not an argument for keeping him on Twitter, but I find it very weird not to know what television shows Donald Trump is watching. Yeah, we talked in the last episode about what books people would be publishing and then, you know, about Trump or about whatever political writers be publishing.

If I were pitching a book right now, it would be every one of Trump's tweets over the last four years annotated. Ooh, can we get McKay Coppins on the line so he can get the contract right now? Us and we and McKay, maybe McKay is at least writing the forward. I don't know what his availability is.

But yeah, just like, just a history of the last four years through Trump's tweets. At this point, after tonight, I think you can do that without feeling like you're, you know, amplifying the guy. To the question of whether or not Trump should have been kept on Twitter. Nibbs, when she wrote her piece back in 2016, just reread it before we came

on the air here, it's fascinating because she was talking about the fact that Donald Trump was lying about the results of the election, the 2016 election. Now, in that case, there was no doubt that Donald Trump won the electoral college, but he was imagining voter fraud again and again and again saying, no, no, no, I also won the popular vote. He was undermining American democracy over and over again on Twitter, just like he was doing this week. Yeah. The very same thing. And Nibbs's argument was there are no laws, and I'm quoting her here, stipulating that Twitter needs to let politicians be on the platform.

Twitter is not obligated, she writes, to allow politicians to use its service as a state misinformation press release platform. By the way, congrats, Nibs, because that is exactly what. what Donald Trump did with it. It would not be intellectual silencing for a technology and publishing platform to expel its most notorious troll. It would be an active disobedience that would stemmy Trump's thus far successful communication strategy. Yes. And I think, I mean, obviously she's responding to the implicit argument that Twitter, in order to achieve total world domination, Twitter does have. have to, I mean, this is what all of the major tech companies are kind of the fine line they're

walking. They basically have to, they want to be utilities and they don't want to be governed as utilities, right? I mean, there's no, the people inside Twitter or the people, the upper, you know, the front office of Twitter certainly sees itself as functionally a utility, right? I mean, like an important, a platform that everybody who wants to say something needs to be on. So the idea of the president of the United States not being there, no matter what he said, was unthinkable to them. Not just not being there, but being pushed out. Now, I mean, and now it's sort of an, I mean, listen, if what happened, if there had been a, the sort of mob, anti-American mob violence that we saw this week, if that had happened two years ago with Twitter abandoned, maybe. but it's certainly a lot easier a decision now, right?

What about during the protests this summer when he said, when the looting starts, the shooting starts? Yeah. You know, I mean, it seems like they looked at a bunch of fastballs right down the plate and kind of shrugged. Listen, they should have done it sooner, and it would have been, I mean, it would have been the right thing to do when Nibs wrote that or before.

But there is a coherent argument for, you know, giving, platforming him or not, deciding to not unplatform him is important so that all of this person's evil is on display. So, I mean, so that there's, you know,

we are basically given a window if we discussed into his mind, into the presidency. And, you know, it's the utility argument too. I, I think it's, it's hard to parse.

But regardless of everything, that came before. And I do believe this is long overdue. I'd say if nothing else, this is, we've been talking about this now all week. I mean, at least Twitter was able to see the thing in front of them and diagnose it appropriately today, right?

I mean, we don't know if these two tweets that you read, where I'm scrolling through Twitter, on ironically right now, and it, Chris Hayes is wondering out loud, this is two hours ago as we're recording this, he wonders if Trump tried to tweet something really nuts, you know,

I mean, and that's total speculation, but that's obviously in play too, right? That they were just, like, screening everything that he was going to tweet before he did it. But regardless, this is a man who very literally instructed an armed mob

to attack the U.S. Capitol. and for all of the mealy mouth equivocating about whether or not well if you can argue that Trump didn't really mean this or if he's saying he didn't mean it then then you know we can't make a unilateral decision that he did mean something else whatever he literally did that thing

he literally did direct a mob to attack the Capitol to to stop the counting of the votes to change to to undermine the election and it would be incredible negligence to not acknowledge that as truth if your Twitter or anybody else in the world.

Yeah, and I think when we think about why he was kept on, I'm not even sure this was the argument. Remember a while back when we were talking about how Trump is what Roger Ebert used to call the talking killer in the movies? This is the movie bad guy.

Yeah. All he needs to do is, is execute his evil plan, but instead he decides to say his evil plan out loud and at some link to the good guy, which allows the good guy to foil him. That was Trump. You know, Trump is always warning us in advance when he's about to do something bad. And Twitter was often the medium he used to tell us that. I'm going to try to steal the election. Hey, whoa. Yeah. Paying attention. Hey, next week. I am still trying to. to steal the election. Hey, hey, hey. So I guess there was something of an argument that if you have

this authoritarian president or would be authoritarian president who is very online, that there was some value in knowing his malicious thoughts, does that make sense? That we could, you know, that you want that that warning was helpful. Then, but then of course, and let me talk myself even down from that idea, then you get to this week. And you have an example of those malicious thoughts actually rallying people to do terrible things. So, I don't know. You know, I don't, I don't, but I do agree with you. I don't, I don't know that after the events of this week, there is any possible argument.

And if you want to be really kind of, well, arch about it, I mean, whatever, one thing that has happened in the past 24 hours, and you saw this epitomized with Josh, we're not to talk about it this episode. I mean, until next week, I'm sure, but Josh Hawley, of course, lost his book deal with Simon and Schuster. They canceled his book. Don't you mean the woke mob at Simon

and Schuster? Yes, which is just using the word mob is unbelievable. Chef's Kiss. What a Josh Holly moment. But one thing that that bore out was that is that those woke mob

is to blame arguments are not going to fly at least this week, right? There's times where if your Twitter or Facebook, whatever else, you can, this was a time where if you were waiting for a time with a moment with clearance to make a decision this bold,

right now is the moment in time. Because Donald Trump, Jr., everybody else is going to be out there. Donald Trump Jr. tweeted tonight that this is like a scene from 1984, which is, I think, something Josh Hawley also literally said in his letter about his book deal. this is a moment in time where

you know hyper-conservatives or whatever you want to call them making 1984 references is just like fucking noise right now and nobody nobody's going to be convinced by this bullshit if you use the word Orwellian you are also banned from Twitter not for doing something dangerous just for just for not thinking of another word

you're also just it's a 24 hour ban but we're also going to throw those out to them we're all good on 1984 or Georgia Orwell references. Thank you very much. No, I mean, it's funny. I mean, essentially the argument you're making is this is probably too late but better late than never. Am I reading that correctly? Yeah.

I mean, not just better late than never, but that almost like if you, if I had known in advance that it wasn't going to happen at any point over the last four years, I might have said right now might be better than any time in the past six months. because he certainly hasn't done himself any favors. And looking into his mind, I mean, it actually has been fruitful in some really dark way. And this is, like I said, this effectively silences him for the rest of his life. I mean, certainly he will have a platform. He's going to say some crazy shit on parlor and he's going to get on. They're going to mention that on CNN because he's Donald Trump.

He's a former president. but the platform, his, I think they're already, I'm seeing, he's already saying, people in the Trump circle are already talking about creating their own platform.

No one's going to, no one's going to care, right? I mean, people, some people are going to care, but functionally, no one's going to care. And that, and because of that,

um, and because he's honestly only now hit his stride as a formal, like, practicing authoritarian. now is the now is the time when he just got his merit badge his authority yes now is the time that he needs to be silenced more than ever if he if he if he had been if he had had a giant platform on gab or wherever the fuck and and was and and everybody in the media

had to set up accounts to follow him we were all and you and i were talking about it every week uh his platform in two weeks would be way bigger than it's ever going to be again so there's a lot of actually benefit, I think, to them waiting as long as they did, at least past a certain point. You mentioned something there that's interesting, which is his ability to tweet something and then have that tweet be read on cable news or be put into a newspaper article. I mean, it was an amazingly efficient vehicle for that. Even after the cable news network said, we're not going to carry Donald Trump speeches live anymore, because that's just free advertising and often full of falsehoods and half truths. They would then just put the tweet on the screen.

Yeah. Even after that happened. It was almost like his workaround. Oh, you're not going to just show me unfiltered for an hour, trashing my opponents and making jokes. I'll just tweet something. And then that will become something that will light up the CNN, Chiron and breaking news, Donald Trump has tweeted. It worked for a long time. Yeah. It's kind of worked less well over the last couple of weeks, but in just in terms of getting Donald Trump, again, to go back to the newspaper analogy, which is, I want my name in the newspaper. I want to be on that thing. It did really work for a long time. Do we want to finish up by some of the best overworked Twitter jokes about Trump being banned from Twitter?

Yes, please. Someone posting as John Barron, you'll remember the Donald Trump alias. that we call the newspapers has already tweeted, Hello, I am brand new to Twitter. What are you guys up to? That was pretty funny. Another good one. This is the first time a sitting president has been banned from Twitter going back to 1812. Trump should start a substack.

And that was kind of inevitable. Jason Schwartz of SI tweeted a picture of a tombstone. And has the phrase took to Twitter and says, took to Twitter 2016 through 2021. Our pal Mark Leibovich also bids farewell to the phrase, sorry I didn't see the tweet, a favorite of Republican senators as they walk through the halls of Congress. Now you really didn't see the tweet. Now it's going to be sorry I didn't see the parlor post because I don't know how to sign up for that. Also, Catherine Kruger, David of the discourse blog, did the invaluable service of rounding up a collection of Trump tweets.

Now you'll remember, we're talking about the stuff he did as president. there's this whole pre-presidential collection of Donald Trump's And there's some beauties in there Let me give you a few of these Sorry losers and haters But my IQ is one of the highest And you all know it

Please don't feel so stupid or insecure It's not your fault Apparently that's real Tons of tweets about Vanity Fair That was one of Donald Trump's favorite subjects on Twitter I love seeing that Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair are failing so badly He's only focused on his bad

food restaurants. Bad food restaurants. Let's see what else. There was the Robert Pattinson Kristen Stewart, Donald Trump fixation. Yeah. Lots of response to my Patinson, Kristen Stewart reunion. She will cheat

again. 100 certain. Am I ever wrong? Wow. That was from 2012. Wow. Victoria's secret reps were nasty to at Kate Upton and now she is doing great. Oh, my gosh.

And then this may be the Alzheimer. I'd like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers on this special date, September 11th. That is from September 11th, 2013. Oh, my God. And again, just a reminder of how he insiduate himself into our lives, long before he became president.

I was watching that Manti-Tayo documentary on ESPN the other day. I was reminded that Donald Trump congratulated deadspin, on its Manteo reporting. I guess. I mean, think about that. Anyway. As we've been,

we'd be remiss not to point this out. As we were recording this podcast, Trump apparently started using his POTUS Twitter account. Which is still in possession of. And no, and Twitter has deleted all of the new tweets. Oh. Like the tweet,

the account still exists. They can't, I guess, delete POTUS, but the last tweet on there, I think is from December, some time ago. Wait,

so Trump is like the, the Krasenstein brothers. He's like figured out the work around. Trump is like, our president is the dude that got kicked out of the bar and then put that like turned around his baseball cap and tried to walk back into the bar.

Like Bobby Valentine and the Mets dug out. Yes. With the disguise. Maybe they won't notice me. My glasses are in my pocket. You know, I mean, it's like, it's, slip back in here. This is,

there's no moment lower in the American presidency than what happened. the other day. But, but man, just in terms of just, I mean, all the low points

we're going to mark, you know, after this presidency is finally over. And by the way, like Congress, impeach this man. Impeach this man.

Like now. David, you better take to Twitter with that one. This is, this is so embarrassing. I mean, this is just so sad.

You got, you got kicked off a Twitter. I mean, could you, imagine what is the child i mean let's take the bar analogies away for a second what would have been what would have been the equivalent of this in any previous presidency like prior like what would have been the ronald regan or bill clinton version of he was just banned yeah is it just that like cnn is like we're tired of bill clinton's lies we just will not be mentioning his name ever again

I mean, like, what, how? This is, yeah, like Sam Donaldson is going to stand in front of another building, not the White House to do his reports tonight. We're going to de-platform you through ABC World News tonight. Yeah, well, there's nothing. There's no precedent for this. I mean, there's no precedent for a presidency that exists only on,

yeah, a presidency that exists only on a social media app or, you know, to the extent that it did. It's, it's, this is a, I don't even know what to say. What a, what a, you know, I will say, one more thing. Okay. I will say this. And then we got to go have a beer. And then we got to go.

I'm done. Throughout his presidency, there was a, uh, kind of conventional wisdom at times, suspicion of other times that Trump would do really wild, crazy stuff on Twitter to distract from other things that were going on. That's clearly not what's happening right now with all of this. But let us not, let us take the lesson from all of those moments and not let this crazy moment involving Trump and Twitter distract from the fact that he committed an act of treason

earlier in this week and needs to be removed from the presidency immediately. All right? Let's not distract ourselves from a fact that a mob that he directed a mob that killed a capital policeman. this week. It's unacceptable to treat anything that happened this week as a normal act of politics and to ignore the fact that it is one of the darkest moments in our country's history. So he got kicked off at Twitter. We have a lot to say about it, but let's not forget the real thing. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We promise we're done

for the week now. David and I have no more content. That's it. Bars closed. Don't don't be even bothered putting the mustache on and trying to get back in here. We are back Monday and maybe even before that, who knows? With more Luke Warb takes about the media. See you that, David. I'm turning my coat inside out and trying to slip back in the back door. See you later, Brian.