Donald Trump Tells Tucker Carlson Twitter Has Made It Hard For People to Follow Him: It's 'Wrong and Possibly Illegal'
President Donald Trump lashed out at Twitter in an exclusive interview with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, which aired Monday night, by claiming that the social media platform may have broken the law by making it harder for people to follow him.
During the interview on Tucker Carlson Live, Trump discussed with the Fox News host a wide-range of topics, including his recent foray into North Korean territory, Iran geopolitics, homelessness, and alleged tech conspiracies against him.
"Google, by some measures the most powerful country in the world, all information flows through it, they're against you. They don't want you re-elected. Can you get re-elected if Google is against you?" Carlson asked the president.
"I've been hearing that about Google and Facebook and Twitter," Trump said, "I won. They were totally against me."
"They fought me very hard, I heard that, and they're fighting me very hard right now," he continued. "Which is incredible because I think the Democrats want to shut them up and frankly, so do a lot of Republicans."
Trump went on to claim that Twitter is interfering with his account by making it difficult for his supporters to follow him.
"If you look at Twitter. I have millions and millions of people on Twitter and it's a very good arm for me. It's great social media," he said. "But they don't treat me right. And I know for a fact that a lot of people try and follow me and it's very hard. I have so many people coming up, they say, 'Sir, it's so hard.' They make it hard to follow. What they're doing is wrong and possibly illegal and a lot of things are being looked at right now."
The president went on to rebuke the social media platform for the alleged conduct. "They were all against me. Twitter was against me. Twitter. I've been very good for Twitter. I don't think Twitter would be the same without what I do on Twitter," he said.
Tucker reiterated Trump's claim that "what the tech companies are doing may be illegal," before asking the president whether the Department of Justice will investigate the claim.
"Well, they could be. I don't even want to say whether or not they're doing something but I will tell you, there's a lot of people that want us to... take action against Facebook and against Twitter and frankly, against Amazon," the president responded.
Trump currently has 61.6 million followers on Twitter, a platform he uses on a daily basis to connect with the public and issue short statements. The president did not offer any evidence for his claims.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for further information but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Trump's comments come days after Twitter announced a new policy to take action against tweets posted by public figures that breach their community guidelines. Under the new notice, which applies to accounts linked to politicians, verified users, and anyone with over 100,000 followers, any tweet found to have violated Twitter's rules could have its reach lessened. However, the policy did not mention restricting followers.
According to the Verge, flagged tweets will be examined by a team within the company to determine whether it's contents constitutes a "matter of public interest." If yes, the tweet will still remain on the platform, but users must first click through a light gray warning box in order to view it. The tweet will also not be featured in sections of the site including, Top Tweets, Safe search, recommended push notifications and the Explore Page.
"In the past, we've allowed certain Tweets that violated our rules to remain on Twitter because they were in the public's interest, but it wasn't clear when and how we made those determinations," Twitter's safety team said in a blog post explaining the decision. "Serving the public conversation includes providing the ability for anyone to talk about what matters to them; this can be especially important when engaging with government officials and political figures."
