White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to Elon Musk announcing he would reverse Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform at Tuesday’s briefing.
“Elon Musk said today that he would reverse the decision Twitter made to ban President Trump, I wondered if the White House has a reaction to that and how that would impact this White House dealing with misinformation,” a reporter asked.
“I would say it’s the decision by a private sector company to make on who will or will not be allowed on their platforms,” Psaki said. “What I will say, broadly speaking, is that our effort is to of course make sure that freedom of speech is protected across the country but that also these platforms are not used for format forums for disinformation and we have seen a history of that not just on Twitter, but also on Facebook.”
“The president believes there’s more that needs to be done in reforming Section 230 and there’s a lot of bipartisan interest in that, so this may be a reminder of the urgency of doing that,” she continued.
Watch:
Musk told the Financial Times’ Peter Campbell during a Tuesday interview that banning Trump “alienated” a large portion of the country rather than silence the former president. Twitter permanently banned Trump in January 2021 for allegedly inciting or justifying violence at the U.S. Capitol.
“I guess the answer is I would reverse the permaban, although I don’t actually own Twitter yet, so this is not something that will definitely happen,” he said. “But my opinion, and Jack Dorsey, I want to be clear, shares this opinion, that we should not have permabans.”
This is an excerpt from the Daily Caller.
