President trumps furious reaction to facebooks action shows that he is, im sorry to say, but info wars president. He is promoting the same alternative in info wars and sharing videos from repugnant characters. Full of fear mongering and conspiracy theorizing info wars tells viewers that the world is out to get him. Jones shows lies about sandy hook massacre but none of this hurts President Trump. Info wars personality align with him. He even gave an interview to alex jones back on the campaign trail. Trump went on a twitter spree saying, its so great to watch this while sharing a video from info wars. He repeatedly retweeted paula joseph watson, one of the info war figures banned by facebook. He retweet the a strange video about islam. This is troubling stuff, a lot of it is troubling stuff. At the same time the president is decrying facebooks action. Facebook decided to block six users as well as info wars as an organization. The highprofile names include nation of islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Six people, one organization banned and its not just facebook. Trump has been complaining about twitter, how Twitter Suspends or briefly puts accounts into a timeout period. Hes complaining about james wood, the actor and rightwing actor star who is on a twitter timeout. Look, the president is clearly trying to tap into conservative concerns about rightwing censorship. How real are those concerns, though . How legitimate is this and how is facebook deciding who should be banned in the first place . Joining me to discuss this is oliver darcy, cnn contributor irin caram. On and judd legum. Judd, let me start with you. You talked in the past about the president and hinfo wars. Trump is doing this because he needs people to believe that facebook is against him. And that facebook is biased against him because thats the only way that he has the space to operate on facebook. His campaign, the 2020 campaign, he put the strategist in charge of his facebook strategy, who is now the campaign manager. Theyre instituting exactly what they did in 2016, which is a whole series of ads that are misleading. And so if they go after info wars, if they go after milo or any of these folks, hell be next. Thats why hes doing that because he needs to be able to draw a he cant let them draw a distinction between what info wars is doing and what nbc or cnn or any Mainstream Media organization is doing. Even though what we get from info wars is Conspiracy Theory crap. In the wake of the notre dame fire, alex jones was talking about if it was arson, how the rest of the media was lying to you about what happened. Oliver, try to distinguish for us between when we talk about these topics and talk about these figures, why is it the six individuals were banned by facebook . What makes them different from from others . These are very extreme individuals. No matter what anyone tells you, they are extremists and thats why with facebook decided to get rid of them from the platform the other day. Back to your point about the info wars presidency, i want to know, i tweeted, whats the difference at this point between trumps twitter feed and inforwars. Com . Infowars might have been banned from twitter but it found a new home at trumps twitter feed. While hes promoting and legitimizing this News Organization we should talk about how hes trying to tear down credible sources for news, the Washington Post, New York Times, cnn. He was questioning why these News Organizations have the ability to be on twitter. Why are they not banned . Right. Saying infowars should be reinstated. Fake news is real, real news is fake. Do you see an answer to olivers question . I think there might be a challenge with respect to the framing. The category cal condemnation, its extremist, racist, antisemitic. I think judging and parsing the context of particular claims, particular assertions from different outlets, people is totally different. Scrutinizing, however, just the broader concern that is starting to be raised in a lot of different circles with respect to censorship, highlighting that is very important. Speech is dangerous. There are ideas unsavory that he we dont like. Of course, facebook shouldnt be coerced into associating with people against their own desires. But the fact that speech can be dangerous, i think its far more dangerous to engage in censorship. Its far more dangerous to have a culture that becomes so opposed to having anyone with unsavory views, have a place to be able to share their views, to be able to promote their views. Argument is meet those views with other views. Meet them with other views. Whats your reaction . I think actually weve had an experiment in a kind of free market of ideas and it has failed. I think so. But the capitalist model of, like, this will you know, there will be a clash of ideas and everyone will be able to figure out which ones are good or not, thats what got us comet pizza. Im not sure that leaves you with. What does that leave you with . Who gets to sanction what is appropriate for us to hear . Right now facebook im suggesting that im suggesting that facebook can continue to make their own determinations. They should. Im saying especially here in places where people are getting media that is appropriate for us to always be skeptical of an approach that says, if someone has ideas, if someone says are dodgy, they shouldnt be allowed to share those ideas. That is a problem. But i think is the idea does facebook i think the idea is does facebook get to have rules . Of course. What does facebook do . Do they just ignore the fact these people have broken the rules or are they going to be consistent . Will they get disciplined, is that censorship or there is Something Else happening where we are bleeding into a circumstance where we say, oh, that is obvious antisemitic. That person is an extremist. Were obviously anticipating can i respond to this . Judd, let me bring you in in washington. Go ahead. I was just going to say, the idea that sandy hook is a hoax and that the children who were murdered on that day is were actors is not promoted by infowars. Thats not an idea. Thats not something that needs to be debated on facebook or on cnn or anywhere. And that is what is going on. So, then to just abstract it all and say, this is a marketplace of ideas. We just need to discuss this. These are not ideas. Its a hoax that its a conspiracy. You confront bad ideas with good ideas. You confront people who are saying things that you dont like in the Public Square. You dont pretend you can abolish them to the depths of the internet and they wont be they wont have a voice anymore. I think the evidence its far more dangerous. The evidence shows to allow them to proliferate on these platforms is allowing them to be legitimized and grow willing. Milo, for example, when he was taking off certain platforms he was selfcensored. His financial viability diminished vastly. I think allowing these ideas to circulate on platforms owned by private companies, theyre finally its a little too late but theyre finally taking responsibility for the fact that like any media company, they have the responsibility for setting rules, following them and making sure that Dangerous Things are not happening on their platform. When the president complains what do you think should not have been banned . The reason i try to take this away from the specific issues and go a bit broader because there are times where civil rights have been things that were alex jones is not a civil rights promoter. Alex jones lets acknowledge the fact that the kind of speech that needs to be protected is always at the margins. Im not asking about the abstractions. Im asking i agree with you. I think what were struggling with, is someone recently remarked that perhaps, perhaps im saying perhaps about this, perhaps the internet is to the First Amendment what the ak47 is to the second amendment. Something that was not imagined or fathomed 200 years ago when our constitution was founded. That does not mean we have to make drastic changes but the world were living in is something that could not have been foreseen. I think thats a very dangerous perspective, quite frankly. I think the fact is that abolitionists once they got their hands on the Printing Press were using it to promote ideas that were very, very radical, that one could say are dangerous. There are people who were fighting for the abolition of slavery who could be described as dangerous radicals, who were willing to promote violence in order to achieve their brian i dont think give me one second. I do think facebook should have rules. Absolutely. So what what do you think should happen to someone if they repeatedly violate facebooks rules . I think facebook gets to make their own rules. They are. But what do you, if youre in charge people who are in the pundit class that we ought to always be acknowledging the fact that, yes, we are going to use preassociation to make it deeply make expense si facebook they would argue, theyre not banning ideas. Theyre banning people who are repeatedly, right, violating the rules. Its clearly laid out there. I think thats true. What do you think when one what do you my response is only cheerlead and not raise some concern about the fact that broader i totally agree that people should in condemning people categorically and getting rid of them in the public when they Say Something we dont like. Its always a consequence. Its one of those things where the margins can actually grow. Facebook court that could hash this stuff out. Bottom line, facebook has rules. If you break those rules, theyll take action against you. Im not raising any issue with that. Its not a government relationship. Its free speech. Judd, one more thought on this from you. The president is saying its getting worse and worse for conservatives specifically. Hes calling out censorship of conservatives. Is there a lot of evidence that conservatives are targeted by big tech . Not at all. If facebook is biased against conservatives, why is fox news the number one shared website on facebook . Why is the daily wire, which is a rightwing blog, and youre going to have their editorinchief on later, in the top ten . Why is it that diamond and silk get more distribution than most any other video platform . And why are they spending why is the Trump Campaign spending 200,000 or more per week on a platform thats supposedly biased against conservatives . It just doesnt make any sense. The last thing ill just say is, this isnt a First Amendment issue. This is an issue of a private company deciding what goes on their platform. Just like i dont get to go on Tucker Carlson every single night, alex jones doesnt have a right to be on facebook. You mentioned the daily wire, so let me bring in ben shapiro, the editorinchief of the daily wire. We talked about this facebook issue a little earlier. Whats your view about the company taking action against these highprofile facebook pages and basically just deleting this em from the internet . Well, im troubled by the fact that facebook cant articulate a clear standard by which it decides who gets to stay and who gets to go. Theyre a private company. They can do what they want to a certain extent. I mean, if they dont want to be considered publishers like cnn is a publisher or daily wire is a publisher, that meenlz there has to be some sort of objective metric to determine if someone gets kicked off or stay on. If they get to exercise editorial judgment from top down, which views are okay and which are not, they should be treated like any other publisher. I dont see any articulated standard. People that have targeted me personally and expressed hate to me personally is not relevant to the question of whether they should be prohibited from the public discourse. In my view is facebook should hold to First Amendment standard, clear definition of incitement to violation. That would be banned. Copyright violation would be banned. The idea you can police hate, just hate, anything you find hateful, thats a pretty broad definition over how much we argue over what we consider is hateful and how much political speech should be included in that ruberratic. What they call organized hate and thats what they say infowars is ingauengaging in. Who decides . The New York Times piece that covered the facebook ban, it explicitly talked about some figures interacted with gaven mcginnis. Lou Louis Farrakhan and snoop dogg went on instagram and released a video. Instagram is owned by facebook, and snoop called for people to post video of farrakhan who he considered a brother. To get around the slope is so slippery. Yet, at the same time, isnt there some responsibility these companies have to show to stop the sickest kinds of ideas from spreading . Well, again, i think that when you talk about the sickest kind of ideas, the best way to fight sick ideas is to fight sick ideas about talking about how terrible they are instead of casting them out and say, were never going to talk to you or answer your questions. All that does is actually, i think, maybe people more extreme who are searching for answers to questions. Instead of going to people who have good answers, they go to people who have bad answers because some people have ruled the question out of bound. Thats something Steven Pinker from harvard has said and i think its absolutely true. If its up to facebook to police violence, all for it. If youre talking about people who are actively calling for violence on other people, thats violation of the First Amendment. Thats not protected by the First Amendment. 23 theres a view that could make somebody mad enough they could go and do, thats true for virtually every political view. From Bernie Sanders to President Trumps views which some people have cited in their own violent attacks. If it becomes a situation where any political view, taken by a bad or extreme person, can now be used as an excuse for the violence such that were going to start casting out those political views, free speech is in danger as a principle. Im struck to hear you say this. A couple days after it was reported that a man was arrested by the fbi for threatening you with very explicit Death Threats. What can you tell us about that case . I cant tell you much just legally speaking because the case is still ongoing. I will say that the Death Threats were very explicit. This is one of the reasons why i think that the facebook statement where they said that they are trying to fight back against violence and hate, the c conflation of violence and hate. I was number one recipient of altrights hatred according to antidefamation league. I know what a violent threat actually looks like. I think that distinction is deeply necessary for us to preserve otherwise to equate speech with violence takes us to a deep route. Up next on reliable sources, the New York Times making big changes after apologizing for an antisemitic car sto cartoon. Is the president s spin winning . When are we going to hear from Robert Mueller . paul great. Another wireless ad. So many of them are full of this complicated, tricky language about their network and offers and blah blah blah. Look. Sprints going to do things differently. And let you decide for yourself. Theyre offering a new 100 total satisfaction guarantee. Try it out and see the savings. If you dont love it, get your money back. See . Simple. Now sprints unlimited plan comes with one of the newest phones included for just 35 a month. So switch now. For people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay. Com for everything that i give, i get so much in return. Join our family of home instead caregivers and help make a world of difference. 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Its officially the bestselling book in the country. The Washington Post version is number one on the New York Times best sellers list. It only takes a tiny fraction of the country to hit number one. We recently polled the country and the respondents said almost no one has read the entire report. Most americans have not read any of the report. There is some in five fighting at fox about the importance of the mueller barr disagreement. Oliver, the significance of the Mueller Report in print, some people are reading it, but most are not. This begs the question for why Robert Mueller has not spoken publicly on camera yet. When is he going to testify . I dont know. It seems like hes a guy whos by the books and doesnt want to maybe break tradition and go out in front of cameras. Remember, comey got a lot of criticism for doing that with the Hillary Clinton thing. Maybe he doesnt want to repeat the same error but its giving trump the upperhand in the Public Relations debate because hes being very loud, going on twitter, doing interviews, saying this vindicates him and coloring the public