Can Donald Trump Shut Down Social Media?

The group chat topic for today is the Don.

Apparently, Donald J Trump does not appreciate being fact-checked on social media. Trump had his Twitter posts checked for facts twice this week, and this upset him very much. After having his posts scrutinized he threatened to “strongly regulate“ or shut down the media platform.

For years Trump’s opponents have criticized Twitter for allegedly allowing him to use the platform to make unsubstantiated claims. Trump has used Twitter to do everything from threatening to ban certain people from serving in the military to accusing former President Barack Obama of unspecified crimes, to declaring that the Mueller investigation found no evidence of collusion with Russia. More recently, Trump has allegedly used Twitter to call people vicious names and to question the mental stability of his opponent former Vice President Joe Biden.

This week Donald Trump allegedly used Twitter to make baseless insinuations that a TV host had involvement in an aide’s death which occurred decades ago. The deceased woman’s husband has been pleading with the president and his administration to keep her death out of the political arena.

The president has also allegedly been using Twitter to express his concerns with mail-in ballots. The president allegedly believes that mail-in ballots would lead to widespread voter fraud. This claim has allegedly been disputed and proven untrue with mail-in ballots being used throughout the country for a vast number of years.

These last two tweets have prompted Twitter to call Trump’s tweets “potentially misleading“ on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning Donald Trump expressed his outrage with his tweets being labeled “potentially misleading“. Trump is trying to figure out how he can prevent Twitter or any other social media platform from scrutinizing his comments.

It remains to be seen how this will play out. For the most part, I try to stay out of political conversations but this is very interesting to me. Can the president shut down a social network? No, seriously I need answers, is social media included in the constitution? I’ll keep an eye on the situation to see how Donald Trump and social media platforms resolve this one. Check in this afternoon from 3 p.m. - 7 p.m. on the Hot 991 app if you have answers, lets group chat.