Trump’s war on tech has already collapsed

Donald Trump has launched a new broadside against Big Tech, with a fresh lawsuit claiming Facebook, Twitter and Google illegally banned him from their platforms. Trumpers might cheer, but the former president already has a losing record in his war against tech, and it’s likely to get worse.

Video transcript

- Rick, I want to ask you about another topic and that's former President Donald Trump's lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook, and Google after they banned him from the platforms. How are these legal battles likely to play out?

- Well, I think people forget that Trump was-- Trump declared war on the tech companies when he was president and I went back and just looked at some of those efforts to see how they panned out and they basically all flamed out. I mean, you just tick through a few of them. He tried to tighten up the rules relating to so-called section 230 of the Communications Decency Act on the social media companies in an executive order last year, that was supposed to make it harder for then And that went to the courts and then President Biden, he repealed that executive order this year.

Let's remember, Trump tried to ban TikTok because it was owned by a Chinese company. He said that was a national security threat. Well, courts disagreed and Biden repealed that order just a few weeks ago. And then go back to Trump trying too-- Trump saying that when Foxconn broke ground in Wisconsin, this was going to bring all these manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Well, it was supposed to be 14,000 jobs. Foxconn has cut that investment by more than 90% and now it's only around 1,000 jobs.

So Trump has this lawsuit against big tech and is probably going to go the same way those executive orders went, which is to say it's going to go away.

- Most of us live in a world where facts and reality matter, but there are lots of people for whom it's about perception. And we could laugh about this, but does it really matter if these suits get thrown out. I mean, if you saw there or read the transcripts from the hearings in Michigan yesterday with the Trump lawyers and the questions that judge was asking about the lawsuits they brought, without any evidence or without them asking any questions of the people who were swearing to affidavits. At the end of the day, does it matter if these things get thrown out?

- Not legally, I think, but I think we all know why Trump is doing this. It's not because he thinks he's going to win in court. He's not. But he's doing two things. He's keeping his name in the news and of course, he needs that for something else he's doing, which is raising money. We've all been seeing the ads and the text messages and the emails that are coming. Hey, I'm fighting social media, the social media giant on your behalf. I'm taking down big tech on your behalf. They censor conservatives.

And this is proven in the past, it helps Trump raise money. It's probably helping him raise money now. We don't know if he's going to run again, but he aims to profit off of this notoriety one way or another. That's been his business model for some time now.