Politics

Facebook To Unban Trump

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Diana Glebova White House Correspondent
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Meta, Facebook’s parent company, will reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account “in coming weeks,” Meta’s president of global affairs told Axios.

“We’ve always believed that Americans should be able to hear from the people who want to lead the country,” Nick Clegg told Axios. “We don’t want to stand in the way of that.”

Meta instituted a two-year ban on Trump’s accounts after he made posts after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that the company thought showed “praise for people engaged in violence.” The ban was set to lift on Jan. 7, but the company took time afterwards to further deliberate. (RELATED: Trump Asks Facebook To Reinstate His Account)

Trump’s team sent a letter to Facebook Jan. 18 asking for the former president to be unbanned.

The letter argued Trump’s ban “has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse,” and that a continued ban would be “a deliberate effort by a private company to silence Mr. Trump’s political voice,” as he’s running in the 2024 presidential election.

Trump will be subject to Facebook’s policies once his account is reinstated, and his posts and ads will be restricted if they violate the rules.

“We just do not want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election,” Clegg told Axios.

Trump responded to the move by saying a social media ban “should never again happen to a sitting President.”

“Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, before praising his social media company.

Even if Trump is reinstated, he is unlikely to post due to his existing contract with Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the company that owns Truth Social. According to the TMTG legal document reviewed by the Daily Caller, Trump is “generally obligated to make any social media post on TruthSocial” first, before posting “on another social media site for 6 hours.”