Michelle Obama Calls on Big Tech to Ban Donald Trump

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Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Former First Lady Michelle Obama is calling on the Big Tech Masters of the Universe to ban President Donald Trump from their platforms, insisting that such a move would “to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection.”

“Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection,” said Michelle Obama in a statement on Thursday.

Mark Zuckerberg had already blacklisted President Trump from the Facebook and Instagram platforms “indefinitely,” following the events on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

In a similar move, Twitter had deleted the president’s tweets — including a video calling on supporters to peacefully disperse — as well as suspended his account for 12 hours, and threatened to ban him permanently from the platform.

But as for Michelle Obama, she appears to believe that Wednesday’s protests on Capitol Hill are the perfect excuse for Big Tech to finally ban Trump once and for all.

In her statement, Obama also mentioned last summer’s Black Lives Matter riots, which she referred to as “an overwhelmingly peaceful movement.”

“This summer’s Black Lives Matter protests were an overwhelmingly peaceful movement — our nation’s largest demonstrations ever, bringing together people of every race and class and encouraging millions to re-examine their own assumptions and behavior,” said Obama.

“And yet, in city after city, day after day, we saw peaceful protestors met with brute force,” she continued.

“We saw cracked skulls and mass arrests, law enforcement pepper spraying its way through a peaceful demonstration for a presidential photo op,” said Obama, referencing the false claim that President Trump had cleared “peaceful protesters” from Lafayette Square so he could walk through it for a photo-op.

President Trump had visited the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, which rioters lit on fire.

Obama went on to suggest that authorities would have been reacted more harshly to protesters on Wednesday, had they been black — seeming to omit the fact that a white woman was shot and killed by Capitol Police on Wednesday.

“What if these rioters had looked like the folks who go to Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday? What would have been different?” asked the former First Lady, referring to Raphael Warnock’s Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia.

“And for those who call others unpatriotic for simply taking a knee in silent protest, for those who wonder why we need to be reminded that Black Lives Matter at all, yesterday made it painfully clear that certain Americans are, in fact, allowed to denigrate the flag and symbols of our nation. They’ve just got to look the right way,” Obama insisted.

“Seeing the gulf between the responses to yesterday’s riot and this summer’s peaceful protests and the larger movement for racial justice is so painful. It hurts,” Obama complained.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.

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