Twitter might not ban Trump. But we should still
ignore him.
Opinion by
Columnist
November 13, 2020 at 1:12 p.m. CST
A
lively debate can be held about whether Twitter should ban President Trump when
he leaves office. He has avoided a permanent ban despite egregious and multiple
violations of Twitter’s terms of service because he falls under an exception
for world leaders. From my standpoint,
Twitter should kick off any repeat offenders, but it is a private company and
can make business judgments for itself. (Republicans seem confused and talk about
social media platforms as if they are government enterprises that cannot ban
opinions with which they disagree.)
Trump talks about founding his own media digital outfit.
Perhaps he will — while also fending off New York state investigations into his
finances and lawsuits from women he allegedly assaulted claiming he defamed
them by accusing them of lying. However, what matters is how the rest of the
media treats him once he is gone from office and his narcissism, racism,
incompetence and delusions are his own problem.
It
should not be news for a former president to tweet wild accusations against a
sitting president or members of Congress any more than it is when your
doddering uncle does. Simply being Trump should not win him attention once he
is out of the White House. Whatever crazy thing he said on “Fox & Friends”
is not newsworthy and deserving of other media outlets’ notice.
Unless
he holds a superspreader event in the future that violates state or local laws
for holding mass gatherings or sickens more people, his speeches are not
newsworthy. Whatever he has said — on Twitter or at an in-person rally — has
been newsworthy only because he was president.
But
while what he says or tweets should be ignored, what he does however
might be deserving of attention. It would be newsworthy, for example, if he
loses a defamation case in which the plaintiff proves she was not lying about
an alleged assault. And news organizations would be obligated to report on any
criminal charges or civil suits brought by New York for any alleged financial
misconduct (e.g., defrauding banks, state tax evasion).
Likewise,
revelations about any crimes, lies and misdeeds when he was president
are just as newsworthy as revelations about the Nixon administration
post-Watergate. They are part of our historical record and might point the way
to necessary reforms. They also reflect on Republican lawmakers who enabled him
and might shed light on former officials who should be held accountable for
legal violations or ethical transgressions. In some cases, these revelations
will be crucial in unraveling and correcting damage done to our institutions,
discovering lies made to courts and determining the legal status of certain
actions.
It
would be a grave error for mainstream media, which before the election never
really got the hang of tuning out Trump’s lying monologues, to compound its
error by continually feeding his insatiable need for attention. (Frankly,
Republican 2024 contenders should be in total accord.) It matters not if Trump
he says he is running in 2024 — he says many things that never come to pass,
including the release of his tax returns. It would, however, also be a
disservice not to assign importance to new discoveries about how he has damaged
our democracy and who helped him do it. For the sake of history, improved
governance and accountability for Republicans, the country deserves nothing
less.