Now that Elon Musk has secured ownership of Twitter, paying $44 billion for the social media platform, the return of those permanently banned, including one former president Donald Trump, dominated Friday’s discussion on “The View.”
Musk has already fired four top executives at Twitter, including the one who permanently banned Trump. “The View” co-hosts Friday dissected what this means in terms of a potential return to Twitter for the ex-president.
Joy Behar posed the question of the state of Twitter resulting from Musk’s helmship, and Sunny Hostin addressed whether Trump will return to the shifting social media landscape.
“I think it’s going to be a free-for-all hellscape and I imagine that Trump will return to unleash his vitriol,” Hostin said. “Others that have been banned will return to unleash their vitriol. I’m always conflicted about the issue of free speech, which doesn’t really even apply here because he’s a private owner.”
Hostin described protecting hateful speech and the first amendment from her law school experience before pointing toward the more general reason that Twitter will become a hellscape.
“It’s a hellscape because of the people that are on it, and the vitriol that anonymously they think they can spew out there,” she said.
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin agreed with Hostin.
“Therein lies the problem is, social media has had a way of bringing out kind of the worst in humanity and it does by the way,” Farah Griffin began. “There’s a lot of good stuff that’s come from social media but people give into their basest instincts when they’re hidden behind a you know, anonymity.”
Farah Griffin also touched on what a return to Twitter would mean for Trump and the broader Republican party.
“I do think Trump’s gonna be back. I think it’s only a matter of time. But some good news for you ladies at the table. I think it hurts him to be on Twitter,” she continued. “I don’t think his crazy statements get as much pickup on Truth Social as they did on Twitter this past week.”
“He came after me on Truth Social, no one noticed it. It was like if a tree falls in the woods, only that little kind of sector isn’t — Twitter’s different,” Farah Griffin added. “He’s gonna have a way bigger platform and it’s going to remind voters of how unhinged he was, of how much drama he created and it’s going to make Republicans have to answer for everything. It’s not good for the party or for him.”
Behar reminded the table and viewers of the leading social media platforms and their owners — including Trump’s Truth Social, Jason Miller’s Getter, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram, Peter Thiel’s Rumble and Kanye West’s bid to purchase Parler, which is owned by Candace Owens’ husband.
“So these Republicans can stop bitching about cancel culture and how they’re the victim, you own everything,” Behar said.
“Well, the left has started this thing called Tribal and it descended into the same kind of hellscape,” Farah Griffin said. “We all just need to do better. I don’t understand why people are like, ‘Oh, suddenly I’m on the internet and I can just say the meanest things around.’”
“It’s because of the anonymity and you know what I will say that we heard all the conservatives complaining, ‘I don’t get enough say on Twitter. I don’t get enough say on Instagram, or Facebook. I’m persecuted on Facebook,’” Hostin added. “Well, there was an analysis done in 2020, and people shared conservatives most read claims of rampant voter fraud roughly twice as often as they did liberals or traditional media outlets, discussions of the issue. So now not only do they have that they have they have conventional social media, as well.”
Then Behar interjected to say, “They need to teach in school how children should differentiate between lies and truth and when they read something,” to which Ana Navarro interrupted with the response: “Oh my God, Joy. They don’t even want to teach history. You think they’re gonna teach them morals?”
Watch the segment below.
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