From the ECLU, this is at Liberty. I'm Molly Kaplan, your host.

Weeks ago, President Trump was banned from nearly every social media platform because of his

role in the events of the Capitol

building on January 6th. Just before Congress was set to certify Joe Biden as the next president

of the United States, Trump instructed his supporters to, quote, fight much harder against

bad people and show strength at the Capitol. The social media bans on Trump and his supporters ignited a debate about whether these social media

companies have too much power over the speech of their users.

Should they have banned Trump sooner?

Are these bans legal?

What kind of precedent does banning Trump and others set for the speech of marginalized communities?

And should the government rein in the private sector power of these companies?

Here to address some of these questions is Kate Ruan.

She's Senior Legislative Council for the First Amendment at the ACLU.

Kate, thanks so much for joining us.

Hi, Molly. Thanks for having me.

So I want to start by addressing and sort of

getting out of the way the piece of this conversation that involves now former President Trump

and his social media behavior. And the conversation is obviously bigger than Trump, but this is just

a good entry point to get us started. And I want to begin by reading a statement that we put out

after it was announced that a number of these social media companies were in some form censoring Trump or permanently banning him from their platforms.

And this statement is attributed to you and it says, for months, President Trump has been using social media platforms to see doubt about the results

of the election and to undermine the will of voters. We understand the desire to permanently suspend

...