WATCH: Kamala Harris Was Mocked and Laughed at for Demanding Trump Be Banned From Twitter — But Nobody’s Laughing Now

Tommy ChristopherJan 9th, 2021, 8:37 am
 

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was widely mocked and literally laughed at when she demanded Twitter suspend President Donald Trump over a year ago — but the carnage at the Capitol is the latest evidence it was no laughing matter.

On Friday, Twitter announced it was banning Trump permanently, then spent their evening suspending other accounts that a desperate Trump tried to use instead, and apart from the rabidly pro-Trump among the media, there was general agreement that in light of recent events, the step was a prudent one.

But that wasn’t the case a year and a half ago when, after Trump had already incited acts of violence that included multiple pipe bombings and mass shootings, then-Senator Kamala Harris began pushing in earnest to have him banned from the platform. Although she’s been vindicated now, here are just a few of the people who should have listened then instead of chuckling.

On September 30 of 2019, Harris told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Trump should be banned from Twitter, telling him, among other things, that “What we want to make sure is that his words do not actually result in harm to anyone.”

The senator followed that up with a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in which she asked for Trump’s suspension, writing “When this kind of abuse is being spewed from the most powerful office in the United States, the stakes are too high to do nothing.”

Twitter’s reply was a lengthy “Nope.”

That same day, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was asked “Should Donald Trump be banned from Twitter?”, and dismissed the idea with a terse “No!” and a derisive laugh.

But the issue really exploded two weeks later when Sen. Harris tried to persuade Warren, during a nationally televised debate, to change her mind and was met with the same terse “No” and a subject change to reining in “big tech.”

Following the debate, MSNBC host Chris Hayes asked Harris about the exchange, but did so by saying “Why does that matter? Of all the things, why that?”

Among other things, the future VP told him to “Ask the whistleblower. Ask members of the United States Congress. Ask the people who are prepared to testify about this president’s lawlessness and obstruction of justice,” and most importantly, “Ask the people and the families in El Paso when that shooter admitted in his manifesto that he was influenced by Donald Trump’s tweets.”

Senator Harris reiterated her prescient position to others following the debate.

The exchange also fueled a lot of Twitter mockery from people who are likely not similarly trashing Twitter’s current decision.

And props to some of those who supported Harris.

Apologies won’t help now, but maybe these folks can reflect on what they should do the next time they have an opportunity to be right about something this important. Especially the journalists.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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