Rick Hasen and Nate Persily on Replatforming Trump on Social Media
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2022
⏱️ 44 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On November 19, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk announced that he would be reinstating former President Donald Trump’s account on the platform—though so far, Trump hasn’t taken Musk up on the offer, preferring instead to stay on his bespoke website Truth Social. Meanwhile, Meta’s Oversight Board has set a January 2023 deadline for the platform to decide whether or not to return Trump to Facebook following his suspension after the Jan. 6 insurrection. How should we think through the difficult question of how social media platforms should handle the presence of a political leader who delights in spreading falsehoods and ginning up violence?
Luckily for us, Stanford and UCLA recently held a conference on just that. On this episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Lawfare senior editors Alan Rozenshtein and Quinta Jurecic sat down with the conference’s organizers, election law experts Rick Hasen and Nate Persily, to talk about whether Trump should be returned to social media. They debated the tangled issues of Trump’s deplatforming and replatforming … and discussed whether, and when, Trump will break the seal and start tweeting again.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | While I support what happened in the Trump case, |
| 0:37.0 | because I think it's so extreme, I think these as a private decision, |
| 0:41.0 | these companies should have a big thumb on the scale, |
| 0:44.0 | favoring free speech, even speech from politicians who may represent ideas |
| 0:49.0 | that are controversial, and in some cases that are even racist |
| 0:55.0 | or taking views that most of us would find to be apport. |
| 0:59.0 | I'm Quintedurusic, senior editor at LawFair, |
| 1:03.0 | and this is the LawFair podcast, December 15, 2022. |
| 1:09.0 | Today, we're bringing you another episode of Arbiters of Truth, |
| 1:12.0 | our series on the online information ecosystem. |
| 1:15.0 | On November 19, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, |
| 1:19.0 | announced that he would be reinstating former President Donald Trump's account on the platform. |
| 1:24.0 | Though so far, Trump hasn't taken Musk up on the offer, |
| 1:28.0 | preferring instead to stay on his bespoke website TruthSocial. |
| 1:32.0 | Meanwhile, Metta's oversight board has set a January 2023 deadline |
| 1:36.0 | for the platform to decide whether or not to return Trump to Facebook, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.