Trump Compares YouTube Removing His Election Lies to Russian Authoritarianism
YouTube has removed a video of Donald Trump‘s appearance on the podcast of the popular creator collective the Nelk Boys, after the former president pushed lies about the 2020 election.
Trump is not happy. “Whatever happened to free speech in our Country?” Trump complained in a statement on Friday. “Incredibly, but not surprisingly, the Big Tech lunatics have taken down my interview with the very popular NELK Boys so that nobody can watch it or in any way listen to it.”
The interview is still available on Spotify and Apple.
Trump continued to compare the video’s removal to information suppression in Russia. “In Russia, the people are not allowed to know that they’re fighting a war in Ukraine, that’s where our media is going, and that’s where our Country is going because it quickly follows—just study history,” Trump wrote. “Are we going to allow this to happen? Our Country is going to hell!”
NEW!
President Donald J. Trump:
“Whatever happened to free speech in our Country? Incredibly, but not surprisingly, the Big Tech lunatics have taken down my interview with the very popular NELK Boys so that nobody can watch it or in any way listen to it. In the 24 hours… pic.twitter.com/fZUQYfaCg6
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 11, 2022
Trump was asked on the Nelk Boys’ “Full Send” podcast about the potential for the potential for nuclear war resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Well you should be scared,” Trump said, “because we have incompetent people heading up our country who, frankly, got there through a fraudulent election.”
This was enough for YouTube to yank it. “We removed this video for violating our election integrity policy, which prohibits content containing false claims that widespread fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election,” YouTube said in a statement provided to Rolling Stone on Friday. “We allow content with sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic context, which the video we removed did not provide.”
The Nelk Boys tweeted that the video had received over five millions views in 24 hours. The interview was freewheeling, to say the least, with the former president ranting about windmills when asked about how the conflict in Ukraine might end. “Well, and I said this a long time ago, we are playing right into their hands with the green energy,” Trump said. “The windmills. They don’t work. They’re too expensive. They kill all the birds. They ruin your landscapes. Yet, the environmentalists love the windmills. I’ve been preaching this for years. The windmills. I had them way down. The windmills are the most expensive energy you can have, and they don’t work.”
Trump even predicted that the podcast might be taken down. “You’ll put it up. Let’s see what happens when they take it down,” he said. “It’s a test.”