Trump declares class action legal war on Big Tech

FPI / July 8, 2021

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday fired a major salvo against Big Tech censorship of conservatives and the America First movement as he filed a class action lawsuit against the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Trump announced at a press conference that he is the lead class representative in a lawsuit being filed with the Southern District of Florida against Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter's Jack Dorsey, and Google's Sundar Pichai.

"I stand before you this morning to announce a very important... development for our freedom and freedom of speech," Trump said.

"In conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I'm filing, as the lead class-action representative, a major class-action lawsuit against the big tech giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as their CEOs."

"We're demanding an end to the shadow banning, a stop to the silencing, and a stop to the blacklisting, banishing and canceling that you know so well," Trump said, adding that the lawsuit would be a "very important game changer for our country."

"It will be a pivotal battle in the defense of the First Amendment and in the end, I am confident that we will achieve a historic victory for American freedom, and at the same time, freedom of speech," Trump said.

Trump called social media companies "the de facto censorship arm of the U.S. government."

He added that "this was especially clear during the pandemic," citing policies against contradicting health experts and the fact that those companies suppressed as a conspiracy theory the very real likelihood that the coronavirus originated in China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Twitter, Google-owned YouTube, and Facebook all banned Trump from their platforms following the events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.

"There is no better evidence that big tech is out of control than the fact that they banned the sitting president of the United States earlier this year," Trump added. "If they can do it to me they can do it to anyone."

There were three separate complaints filed in Miami federal court under Trump's name Wednesday, one against each of the Big Tech axis.

"While the social media companies are officially private entities, in recent years they have ceased to be private with the enactment and their historical use of Section 230, which profoundly protects them from liability," Trump said. "It is in effect a massive government subsidy, these companies have been co-opted, coerced and weaponized by government actors to become the enforcers of illegal, unconstitutional censorship."

Trump's lawsuit is being led by the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit run by several allies and alumni from the Trump administration.

"It's no surprise then that they want the First Amendment gone," Rollins said of "progressives" and "elites," AFPI President and CEO Brooke Rollins said. "They don't advocate for abolition... but they do advocate for curtailing it into meaninglessness. Nowhere is that more evident than in the suppression of First Amendment rights online."

AFPI's Pam Bondi said: "This isn't just for conservatives, this is for our media... this is for Democrats and even progressives whose speech should be protected under the First Amendment. Do you remember that Tulsi Gabbard was censored when she was running for president?"

Over 192,000 Americans watched Trump’s speech live on the RSBN Rumble channel.

Gateway Pundit noted that Joe Biden "is lucky to get 1,200 people watching him at the White House YouTube channel."

Washington Times columnist Cheryl K. Chumley noted that the lawsuit "is a winning issue for Trump. It’s a real 'give the people what they want' moment."

Americans, Chumley wrote, "at least conservative Americans — are ticked off at smug social media giants that smugly silence voices who don’t follow the left’s talking points, and then just as smugly refuse to acknowledge that what they’re doing is targeting conservative voices to silence."

Chumley concluded: "Win or lose, it’s the fight that’s going to rouse the Trump base further, to unite the Trump base further. Win or lose in court, win or lose a class-action label, it’s Trump’s announced willingness to make the fight, to bring the fight, to at least take the fight to a war-like level, that’s going to solidify the conservative base further, that’s only going to put more faces on the enemies of freedom, that’s only going to unify further the patriotic voters against Democrats who shield the social media execs from accountability, against even Republicans who fail to side with Trump by calling for a stripping of Section 230 protections for social media.

"Win or lose, the social media giants are already losing."

Free Press International