Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump agreed with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ recent comments where he called the former president’s Twitter ban “scary” and said he was uncomfortable that Trump couldn’t express his views on Twitter during his presidency.
The Right View podcast host was appearing on conservative television network Newsmax, which referenced a recent interview that Sanders did with The New York Times on Tuesday.
Speaking to the Times‘ Ezra Klein, Sanders criticized the former president, calling him “a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, [and] an authoritarian,” but said he felt conflicted and uncomfortable about the ban as it happened during Trump’s presidency.
While the senator said that the internet shouldn’t be used to promote conspiracies and hate speech nor should it be used for “authoritarian purposes and insurrection,” he criticized the precedent that it could set and was unsure how to balance preserving the First Amendment and trying to limit dangerous rhetoric.
“Because of anybody who thinks yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view,” Sanders told the Times. “So I don’t like giving that much power to a handful of high tech people, but the devil is obviously in the details and it’s something we’re going to have to think long and hard on, and that is how you preserve First Amendment rights without moving this country into a big lie mentality and conspiracy theories.”
After Newsmax played an edited portion of the the Times interview, Lara Trump remarked that the comments were “one of the few things I agree with Bernie Sanders on.”
“He’s exactly right,” she said. “They shield themselves behind the idea that these are private companies and they don’t have to follow the same rules as other outlets. They absolutely should. Our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech should be upheld across the board, period. That should be the bottom line here.”
The former president’s daughter-in-law also echoed Sanders’ statement that a tech company could move to ban others besides the former president.
“When you have people who have the ability to censor and shut down the President of the United States, that is really scary,” Lara Trump said. “You might not like Donald Trump, but if it’s Donald Trump today, it could be your guy or girl tomorrow. It could be you tomorrow.”
While admitting that it’s rare for her to agree with Sanders, Lara Trump said that the ban was overall bad.
“It is not a good precedent. It is not good for the country. It’s not good for our standing in the world. It’s a really scary prospect,” she said.
Newsweek reached out to Sanders’ press secretary and Lara Trump for comment.
Global leaders have also chimed in on Twitter’s ban of Trump. Shortly after the then-president was booted off the platform in January, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the ban “problematic.”
“This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators—not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” her spokesperson told reporters in January.
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