Bill Gates argued social media companies should eventually allow former president Donald Trump back on their platforms after he was banned last month following the Jan. 6 uprising at the US Capitol.
“I think at some point he probably will be allowed back on and probably should be allowed back on,” Gates told CNBC this week when asked what he would do about Trump if he were a Facebook official.
Facebook temporarily suspended Trump following the riot and has left the decision of whether to allow him to return to the company’s independent Oversight Board, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Twitter permanently banned Trump and said it would not reverse its decision.
Gates said he understood why Trump was banned, since Trump was “saying that the election was stolen without any facts there.”
His statement seemed to intentionally discount the countless witness affidavits and other evidence supporting the allegations of widespread vote fraud, which no honest and reasonable person would dispute, even if they disagree on the scope of it.
After repeating the Left’s “Big Lie” about the lack of vote fraud, however, the globalist, pro-China Microsoft founder pivoted to a more gracious and forgiving stance.
Gates suggested that Trump’s good-faith, unrelenting effort to safeguard the democratic processes of free and fair elections should not permanently stigmatize him.
Big Tech needs to “find a way to let him back on,” Gates said, even if that means Trump’s content “may be labeled as false in a lot of cases.”
Some self-interest may be involved as Trump has promised to pursue a new social-media platform, which may well disrupt the hegemonic, monopolistic dominance of Silicon Valley-based tech companies.
Moreover, censoring the iconoclastic Trump may have the effect of creating an even greater mystique and allure among his base, especially with Democrats controlling nearly all the levers of power.
Conversely, by allowing him back on the platforms, Gates predicted that “people’s interest in what he says may go down quite a bit.”
Big Tech already has faced significant backlash for deplatforming Trump.
Congressional Republicans vowed to re-up a push to revoke Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and tens of thousands of conservative users fled Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for conservative-friendly alternatives, such as Parler, Gab and Rumble.
Stockholders also made known their outrage, dumping Twitter with more than 6% losses on the day after plummeting more than 12% at open.
Trump warned Big Tech before President Joe Biden’s inauguration that the companies’ “divisive” actions would be bad for the country.
“I think that Big Tech is doing a horrible thing for our country and to our country and I believe it’s going to be a catastrophic mistake for them,” Trump said.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
