“Eric Trump was feeling a little anti-social about social media sites Wednesday night on Laura Ingraham’s show. President Donald Trump’s second-born son accused social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram of censoring his posts. His evidence, he insisted, was “based on engagements and likes.” Eric Trump’s baseless accusations came on a day when the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google faced similar attacks from Republican politicians at a Senate hearing. Republicans, led by the president, have accused the social media platforms, without evidence, of deliberately suppressing conservative, religious and anti-abortion views, especially in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election. The hearing was ordered after Facebook and Twitter limited the dissemination of an unverified story about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden from the conservative-leaning New York Post. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai all denied censoring Republicans during the hearing, but Eric Trump wasn’t buying it. “You better believe they also have their fingers on the dial. If I put something out that they disagree with, the numbers are down. I can just see it based on engagements and likes,” he said. “They are censoring us, they don’t do it to the other side and it’s gross.” Trump’s son then showed he inherited his dad’s drive to turn a personal grievance into a (so-called) national obsession. “But Americans are seeing through it, believe me. Americans see through it,” he said. “And quite frankly, the one thing you don’t want to do to Americans is take away their free speech.” “It’s our First Amendment right for a reason, and I’m telling you people aren’t happy about it. I think it’s actually probably become the No. 1 issue in politics,” he added. Eric Trump’s gripe on Fox News comes a week after his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., whined about “algorithms” in a very bizarre Instagram post: Hey guys hope you’re doing well. Just watching my algorithms get crushed. I guess I did something to piss off the Instagram gods. So hopefully you’re seeing this stuff anyway. We’ll do what we can. Talk to you soon. View this post on Instagram In IG jail. Watching my post get about 20% of what they were getting last week so if you want turn on post notifications that way maybe you’ll at least see my stuff. A post shared by Donald Trump Jr. (@donaldjtrumpjr) on Oct 18, 2020 at 7:02pm PDT The Associated Press contributed to this report.
