Neil Cavuto says Trump should 'be careful what he wishes for' in signing social media executive order
On Thursday afternoon, President Trump signed an executive order targeting social media companies in response to Twitter fact-checking two of his tweets in which he posted potentially false or misleading information about mail-in voting just a couple days earlier. In the tweets, Trump claimed that mail-in ballots would be wrought with fraud, including forged ballots and millions of unregistered voters in California receiving ballots, all unsubstantiated. Fox News’s Neil Cavuto, as he tends to do, called out the president and agreed that Twitter was right to fact-check Trump.
Video Transcript
NEIL CAVUTO: The issues that came into mind, one of them that prompted a quick fact-checking on mail-in ballots is what got the president's ire because he said that he was being policed on that. He was being policed on that because he was wrong.
- On Thursday afternoon, President Trump signed an executive order targeting social media companies in response to Twitter fact-checking two of his tweets, in which he posted potentially false or misleading information about mail-in balloting. But Fox News's Neil Cavuto says Twitter was right to do so.
NEIL CAVUTO: He was being policed on that because he said millions of illegals were getting ballots when that simply was not the case. So this isn't a left-right issue. That was not the case. That was a wrong fact. That was a misstatement. Some had said it was an outright lie.
- The executive order calls for new regulations for a 1996 law allowing companies like Twitter and others to moderate the content on their site, while protecting them from lawsuits over what is posted. Twitter calls the executive order a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law. And Cavuto thinks the president may not like the consequences of this new order.
NEIL CAVUTO: He might be careful what he wishes for on this. Because if you are limiting their protection from any legal action because of something users are saying, that presumably could include no less than the President of the United States. If they feel uncomfortable about something he is saying, next time, forget, fact-checking him. They might have to take him down.
- And Fox News legal analyst Judge Napolitano joined other legal experts in saying he believes that Trump doesn't even have the right to do this.
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: It could terminate his account this afternoon if they want. They have no obligation to run anything that they don't want to, and the government has absolutely no right whatsoever to censor what they run. That's quite simply immunized from government scrutiny by the first amendment.
