President Donald Trump took to Twitter Saturday morning to retweet a number of well known far-right extremists, some of whom were recently banned from Facebook. Among them, InfoWars’ London editor Paul Joseph Watson who was banned from the social media platform on Friday along with the program host Alex Jones.
Trump retweeted Watson’s Friday tweet, in which he linked to a YouTube video rant and wrote, “‘Dangerous’. My opinions? Or giving a handful of giant partisan corporations the power to decide who has free speech? You decide.”
On Friday, Trump had warned against censorship of American citizens. “I am continuing to monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms,” he tweeted. “This is the United States of America—and we have what’s known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH!” Trump wrote in a tweet. “We are monitoring and watching, closely!!””
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Watson, who is a British citizen, retweeted the president’s tweet.
The president’s love didn’t stop with Watson. Trump retweeted an incendiary missive by Mindy Robinson, host of ‘Red, White, and F You: Unapologetically Patriotic’ in which she wrote of her disappointment that actor activist James Woods, was among those banned from Twitter. “So James Woods was kicked off Twitter for quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson...but @TalbertSwan the racist fake man of God, that’s SUPPOSED to be permanently banned for hate speech is back on? What have you to say @jack @Twitter ?”
Robinson’s tweet failed to mention the real reason Woods was kicked off Twitter. His tweet that “quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson” ended on a decidedly non-Emersonian call to “#HangThemAll.” The hashtag violates Twitter policies about promoting violence.
The president also retweeted Lauren Southern, a Canadian far-right extremist and self-described patriot who has spent time in Europe protesting the use of nongovernmental organization rescue ships. She was also part of a group that promised to “hunt migrants” traveling from the coast of North Africa to Italy.
The president retweeted her Friday tweet, in which she wrote, “Lmao at establishment conservatives who think they won’t be labeled the new “dangerous” / “extremist” voices when those to the right of them are all banned. Good luck with that one guys.” The tweet ended with an emoji sometimes associated with a white power hand signal.
Trump also retweeted an anti-Muslim video by an account that promotes QAnon, a wild conspiracy theory that falsely accuses Trump’s opponents of being involved in Satanic child sex-trafficking and cannibalism. Trump has previously retweeted the same account, which uses the spike in traffic to promote the author’s fringe conspiracy books.
Trump ended the Saturday morning tirade with his own warning. “When will the Radical Left Wing Media apologize to me for knowingly getting the Russia Collusion Delusion story so wrong?” he tweeted. “The real story is about to happen! Why is @nytimes, @washingtonpost, @CNN, @MSNBC allowed to be on Twitter & Facebook. Much of what they do is FAKE NEWS!”
