President Trump’s ongoing feud with social media companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter has taken a serious turn: he’s threatening to veto a nearly $1 trillion funding bill for the U.S. military if he doesn’t get his way.
Trump is demanding that Congress repeal a federal law called Section 230, which shields tech, social media and other companies from liability for opinions posted or published by their users.
“Trump delivered his ultimatum … in a pair of late-night tweets that transformed a critical national security debate into a political war over his unproved allegations that Silicon Valley’s technology giants exhibit systemic bias against conservatives,” reports the Washington Post.
On Twitter, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called Trump’s threat “deeply dangerous & just plain stupid.“
“On his way out the door, the lame-duck president is desperate to pull the levers of state power to squeeze private enterprises he views as inhospitable to his political interests,” writes Post opinion columnist James Hohmann.
“That is deeply at odds with the American tradition. It also would have been anathema to conservatives before Trump hijacked their movement,” Hohmann says.
Big Tech denies any anti-conservative bias, and there is little evidence to support the claim.
There are indications that lawmakers from both parties intend to ignore Trump’s threat and pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) without altering Section 230.
“At this last minute, this sudden threat on an item that’s not even part of a defense bill. … I don’t think we could do it in a thoughtful, logical way at all,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico. He added that Trump’s threat “seems to be more out of spite than anything else.”
“Key Republicans also made clear they weren’t going to bend to Trump,” the political website added.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that while he agrees with Trump on Section 230, the provision ‘has nothing to do with the military.’”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) tweeted Wednesday morning that “230 should NOT be mixed with NDAA & used by @realDonaldTrump to veto.”
The NDAA has been passed annually for 59 years on a bipartisan basis; it “guides Pentagon policy and cements decisions about troop levels, new weapons systems and military readiness, military personnel policy and other military goals,” the Post says.
