On Sirius XM, Angelo Carusone explains Facebook’s short term Trump ban is an admission “they are going to let him back on”
Carusone: “The people driving the policy decisions there, in addition to Zuckerberg, are two people – are two Republican operatives”
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On Sirius XM, Angelo Carusone explains Facebook’s short term Trump ban is an admission “they are going to let him back on”
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From the June 4, 2021, edition of SiriusXM's The Dean Obeidallah Show
ANGELO CARUSONE: This has been the set-up from the beginning. When, after the Capitol Attack, the social platforms started to ban Trump, and as you point out, many of them that he was very active on, like Twitter, they banned him permanently.
Facebook suspended him for two weeks. Then, this whole nonsense about the oversight board, Facebook actually assumed that Donald Trump was going to file an appeal to their suspension. When Trump didn't do it, they filed an 11th hour appeal before the deadline closed, of their own suspension.
DEAN OBEIDALLAH (HOST): Wow.
CARUSONE: The whole reason this even went to the oversight board in the first place is that Facebook had issued their own appeal. So, a lot of this is kind of deluded, but the core of it is that they basically did something very short term in hopes that the oversight board would let Trump back on when they kicked it back to Facebook.
Now they're in this weird middle ground, and I actually think it's the worst possible outcome, which is that they've confirmed that they are going to let him back on. That's been a little muddied in the comms today, but if you look at the statement that they put out, they said that when Trump's suspension is eventually lifted.
OBEIDALLAH: Right.
CARUSONE: And they talk about the fact that it's not -- they say two years, but that's it. Two years, and then they're going to lift it. Now, they may re-evaluate, and unless there's an imminent threat, they will -- they're going to restore him, is what they said. It's really bad, because that means he's coming back at obviously a political time, when it will be much harder to get any action against him because he will be in the heat of a campaign at that point.
And, you know, ultimately, I think what it says about Facebook, and that's the part that's more concerning, is that we've seen, consistently, Facebook mollifying right-wing critics in bad faith.
So, either they're afraid of them, right? They're afraid of the right-wing blowback, or worse, right? They're sort of in-cahoots.
And I think people -- and this is where I'll stop is, the decision maker, the person that sets the policy at Facebook is a guy by the name of Joel Kaplan, who was a participant in the Brooks Brothers riot, which is that thing in Florida during the 2000 recount where they shut down the recount at the deadline.
OBEIDALLAH: Oh, I remember, right. Yeah.
CARUSONE: And his deputy is another Republican operative that was also a participant in the Brooks Brothers riot. Like, the people driving the policy decisions there, in addition to Zuckerberg, are two people -- are two Republican operatives.