New York Times editor and MSNBC analyst Mara Gay told a “Morning Joe” panel Thursday that former President Donald Trump returning to Facebook could “take down the country.”
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is expected to reinstate Trump’s account, according to an Axios report. The company banned the former president for two years for allegedly showing “praise for people engaged in violence.”
“You don’t want to, whether you’re a company or an institution, you don’t want to hand over the keys to democracy to have someone destroy that democracy,” Gay said. “So do you want to be that institution that really helps take down the country? I mean, this is a business so yes, it’s a little bit different than a public institution, but we should still be asking the moral question. Years ago, we would be asking the moral questions, do we want a chemical company, should we be supporting weapons of war?
“These are questions that are not new in American history but we should be asking them. And Facebook or Meta may not have the same responsibility. As a business, it has a responsibility to its shareholders, fine, but we can still ask those moral questions and we should,” she concluded.
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The former president’s team asked Facebook to reinstate his account in a Jan. 18 letter, two months after he announced his 2024 presidential re-election bid. The letter said the ban “has dramatically distorted and inhibited the public discourse” and that a continued ban would intentionally silence his “political voice.” (RELATED: Elon Musk Would Allow Donald Trump Back On Twitter)
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that a ban on social media should never happen to a sitting or former president.
“FACEBOOK, which has lost Billions of Dollars in value since ‘deplatforming’ your favorite president, has just announced that they are reinstating my account,” Trump wrote. “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else that is not deserving or retribution!”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account in November after a public opinion poll ruled to have him back on the platform.