Donald Trump sues Twitter and Facebook for 'censoring' him

Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he is filing a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and Google, in a bid to restore his suspended social media accounts.

The lawsuit is an escalation of a long battle he has fought against tech giants he argues have wrongfully censored him.

“We’re going to hold big tech accountable,” the former president told reporters from a podium at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Facebook banned Mr Trump indefinitely on January 7 over his incendiary comments that preceded the US Capitol insurrection by his supporters one day earlier.

Twitter quickly followed suit and permanently suspended the former president’s account due to the "risk of further incitement of violence."

Mr Trump said he is filing the suit in US District Court in southern Florida, but stressed that he is not looking for any sort of a settlement.

According to the lawsuit, Mr Trump claimed he was banned for “exercising his constitutional right of free speech.”

Some experts say the legal effort is all but guaranteed to fail, however, as the platforms are private entities, not government institutions that need to guarantee free speech.

“Big Tech” has become the "enforcers of illegal, unconstitutional censorship," the 75-year-old Republican said.

The issue has become a touchstone for the Republican Party, which believes the US”s biggest tech companies should be more accountable to the government.

House Republicans announced on Wednesday an agenda that would make it easier to break up tech companies in court and challenge unfair censorship.

It came as Mr Trump was alleged to have told his chief of staff that Adolf Hitler “did a lot of good things” as leader of Nazi Germany, leaving the retired four-star Marine general “stunned,” according to a new book.

The former president was on a tour of Europe in 2018, when John Kelly gave him an impromptu history lesson to “remind the president which countries were on which side during the conflict” and “connect the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler’s atrocities” it has been claimed.

But Michael Bender, author of the forthcoming book ‘Frankly We Did Win This Election,’ alleges that Mr Trump insisted on outlining the positives of Germany’s economic recovery during the 1930s, saying: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”

Mr Trump has denied making the remark about Hitler, Mr Bender said, and the Telegraph has contacted his office for comment.