Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and PragerU are among the conservative voices that have been tapped to attend next week’s White House “social media summit.” That news is courtesy of The Washington Post, which highlights some of the plans for the July 11 event, set to focus on “opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment.”
The move won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the news cycle since Trump took office. While social media sites have been the subject of plenty of criticism from both the left and the right, conservatives in particular have had companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter in their sights over claimed “liberal biases.”
Just yesterday, Trump told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the sites have been “fighting” him. “I know for a fact a lot of people try and follow me and it’s very hard,” the president said. “I have so many people coming up that they say, ‘Sir, it’s so hard. They make it hard to follow.’ What they’re doing is wrong and possibly illegal. And a lot of things are being looked at right now.”
While Trump offered no specific evidence around his claims, the move follows a pattern of accusing different platforms of “shadow banning” Trump and other conservative voices. Last week, Twitter announced that it would be issuing warnings for “abusive behavior” from prominent news figures. While not a block or a ban, the move is an attempt to walk the line between curbing abuse and maintaining “newsworthy” content. Many saw the move as specifically targeting Trump.