Posted on 30 January 2021
If anybody still wonders about whether or not Twitter's banning of President Donald Trump from its platform was utterly political, Politico's story on Thursday by Natasha Korecki should resolve any lingering doubts. In fact the article forthrightly reveals Twitter's blatant favoritism right in the headline, "Twitter’s priceless gift to Biden."
As he entered his first week in office, President Joe Biden was handed a priceless gift: the blissful sound of former President Donald Trump’s Twitter silence.
...Indeed, Twitter’s suspension of Trump’s account has seemed to realign the political universe, minimizing diversions and interruptions as the broader conversation over Biden’s agenda played out. Trump wasn’t there to demand a popular uprising against Biden’s federal mask-wearing mandate. His Twitter megaphone wasn’t hyping the construction job losses that could come when Biden ended the Keystone XL pipeline project. Trump wasn’t calling Biden a “loser” for his Covid-19 vaccination plans, or attacking Anthony Fauci as a failure he should have fired when the nation’s leading infectious disease expert spoke out about how difficult it was for scientists to operate in the Trump administration.
Yes, thank you Twitter for the "priceless gift" of your very convenient ban on Trump in order to make things politically easier for Biden.
John Anzalone, a pollster who worked for both Biden and Obama, said that since Trump has been muted, Americans are likely feeling a sense of relief — a reset of sorts. Anzalone said it fell on the media whether to allow Trump to still play an outsized place in today’s dialogue, given the violence that broke out after the Capitol riots.
“Would the press still be reporting what he says? When does it end? When does his criticism become irrelevant? At some point, it’s just an angry citizen, ex-president,” Anzalone said. “I don’t think it would change anything the Biden administration is doing. They’re just putting their heads down and getting things done.”
A plea for the rest of the media to also join Twitter in muting Trump in order to present a "priceless gift" to Biden.