Trump accuses Silicon Valley of colluding to silence conservatives

President Trump on Tuesday suggested that Google, Facebook and Twitter have colluded with each other to discriminate against Republicans.

“We use the word collusion very loosely all the time. And I will tell you there is collusion with respect to that,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House Rose Garden. “Something has to be going on. You see the level, in many cases, of hatred for a certain group of people that happened to be in power, that happened to win the election.

“Something’s happening with those groups of folks that are running Facebook and Google and Twitter and I do think we have to get to the bottom of it,” he added.

The president’s comments marked an escalation in his criticism of U.S. tech giants like Twitter, a platform that he frequently uses to promote his policies and denounce his political opponents.

Trump: Twitter, you’ve changed pic.twitter.com/YukUkpbPjO

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) March 19, 2019

Trump said Twitter is “different than it used to be,” when asked about a new push to make social media companies liable for the content on their platform.

“We have to do something,” Trump said. “I have many, many millions of followers on Twitter, and it’s different than it used to be. Things are happening. Names are taken off.”

{mosads}He later alleged that conservatives and Republicans are discriminated against on social media platforms.

“It’s big, big discrimination,” he said. “I see it absolutely on Twitter.”

Trump and other conservatives have increasingly argued that companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter have an institutional bias that favors liberals. Trump tweeted Tuesday morning that the tech giants were “sooo on the side of the Radical Left Democrats.”

The three companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump’s Tuesday morning tweet.

He also vowed to look into a report that his social media director, Dan Scavino, was temporarily blocked from making public comments on one of his Facebook posts.

The series of comments came a day after Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) sued Twitter and some of its users for more than $250 million. Nunes’s suit alleges that the platform censors conservative voices by “shadow-banning” them.

The California Republican also accused Twitter of “facilitating defamation on its platform” by “ignoring lawful complaints about offensive content.”