Donald Trump frivolously sues big tech firms in his latest ploy for money and attention

Seek­ing to col­lect cash, cling to his fol­low­ing and draw atten­tion, Don­ald Trump told an hour-long news con­fer­ence Wednes­day he will be the lead plain­tiff in a class action suit against tech giants Twit­ter, Face­book, and Google as well as their chief exec­u­tive offi­cers (Jack Dorsey, Mark Zucker­berg, Sun­dar Pichai).

Trump is strik­ing out at those who banned him after his role incit­ing the mob of ter­ror­ists who invad­ed the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6th, assault­ed Capi­tol Police, ter­ror­ized mem­bers of Con­gress, and chant­ed  “Hang Pence”, nam­ing Trump’s own vice pres­i­dent. The mob sought to halt Con­gress’ count of elec­toral votes that put Joe Biden in the White House. Pence was serv­ing as pre­sid­ing officer.

“There is no bet­ter evi­dence that big tech is out of con­trol than the fact that they banned the sit­ting Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States ear­li­er this year,” said Trump.

“If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone.”

Trump is banned, per­ma­nent­ly from Twit­ter – his chief plat­form, used to fire Cab­i­net sec­re­taries dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion – and is barred from Face­book for at least two more years. The for­mer occu­pant of 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue was impeached by the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for his actions as inciter-in-chief.

Trump is a liti­gious guy, but with a record of rarely fol­low­ing through on bal­ly­hooed law­suits. He is charg­ing that big tech has cen­sored he and oth­ers on the far right with biased poli­cies. But he has fur­nished no evi­dence to sup­port the claim. While say­ing Trump’s First Amend­ment rights have been denied, the suit makes no sim­i­lar claim about the tech com­pa­nies’ bar­ring of pornog­ra­phy or Russ­ian and Chi­nese dis­in­for­ma­tion claims.

The law­suit was filed in the U.S. Dis­trict Court in South­ern Flori­da. The Sun­shine State became Trump’s legal res­i­dence in 2019, after he aban­doned New York.

How­ev­er, the terms of ser­vice for both Face­book and Twit­ter say that the venue for any legal dis­putes shall be the Cal­i­for­nia courts, state and federal.

Trump drove up cable tele­vi­sion rat­ings through the 2016 cam­paign and much of his pres­i­den­cy. Nowa­days, how­ev­er, his nim­bus may be wear­ing thin.

CNN and MSNBC did not broad­cast his news con­fer­ence, held at his Bed­min­ster, New Jer­sey golf course. Rupert Mur­doch’s Fox pro­pa­gan­da chan­nel cut away as Trump launched into an hour-long recita­tion of griev­ances and denun­ci­a­tion of “Demo­c­rat-led cities.” Only News­max stayed with him.

The law­suit does offer Trump an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cash out.

A “Save Amer­i­ca” fundrais­ing blast went out, say­ing “Pres­i­dent Trump is fil­ing a law­suit against Face­book and Twit­ter for unfair cen­sor­ship. For the next hour, we’ve acti­vat­ed a 5X Impact on all gifts.” Trump sup­port­ers were offered the oppor­tu­ni­ty “to get your name on the donor list that Pres­i­dent Trump sees.”

(Like Tim Eyman mon­ey rais­ing appeals here in Wash­ing­ton State, come-ons from Trump fea­ture lots of cap­i­tal let­ters and hyperbole.)

The class action suit is being backed and han­dled by the Amer­i­ca First Pol­i­cy Insti­tute, a front set up by Trump sup­port­ers after he left office.

The fil­ing is noth­ing if not ambi­tious. It demands that the tech giants hand over puni­tive dam­ages to the twice-impeached pres­i­dent and restore his accounts.

It also asks the fed­er­al courts throw out Sec­tion 230 of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Decen­cy Act as “an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al del­e­ga­tion of authority.”

Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter are not pri­vate tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies but actu­al­ly arms of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, or so argues the com­plaint, because they have worked with pub­lic offi­cials and agen­cies (e.g. the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol) to for­mu­late poli­cies on mis­in­for­ma­tion. The firms’ “sta­tus thus ris­es beyond that of a pri­vate com­pa­ny to that of a state actor” in the rea­son­ing of Trump law.

“This law­suit is a stunt, and it’s unlike­ly to find trac­tion in the courts,” Jameel Jaf­fer, direc­tor of the Knight First Amend­ment Insti­tute at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, told the Dai­ly Beast.

As usu­al, Trump wants every­thing he does to be seen in the con­text of size. The suit against big tech will “go down as the biggest class action ever filed because thou­sands of peo­ple want to join,” Trump claimed Wednesday.

Even in fil­ing a class action law­suit, how­ev­er, Trump lacks class.