Trump says today's White House social media summit will focus on what he calls the 'dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression' practiced by companies like Facebook and Twitter
- President Donald Trump is hosting a social media summit at the White House on Thursday, though social media companies like Twitter and Facebook aren't invited.
- Instead, the White House invited a variety of controversial right-wing figures.
- On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted that the event would focus on "tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies" - a reference to social media giants like Twitter and Facebook, which Trump has repeatedly claimed are censoring him.
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The White House is hosting what it's calling a "social media summit" on Thursday, but the event won't include any social media companies.
Instead, the event will focus on "tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies," according to President Donald Trump. He has repeatedly accused social media service companies like Facebook and Twitter of bias against him and his supporters, and the White House even created a tool for documenting reports of alleged bias.
While companies like Facebook and Twitter weren't invited to the White House meeting, a variety of controversial right-wing social media personalities and propagandists were: Ben Garrison (whose cartoon of former national security adviser H.R. McMaster was called "blatantly anti-Semitic" by the Anti-Defamation league), right-wing conspiracy theorist and internet personality Bill Mitchell, and a pro-Trump meme maker who goes by the name "Carpe Donktum."
The White House hasn't released a full list of invitees.
Though Trump has millions of followers on Twitter, and regularly uses the social media platform as a means of communicating with the American public, he's repeatedly accused the company of censoring him.
"I will tell you, they make it very hard for people to join me on Twitter, and they make it very much harder for me to get out the message. It's incredible," he said in a June interview with Fox Business Network.
Twitter has denied that any change in Trump's follower count is due to political bias, saying users' follower counts may drop as it removes fake or automated accounts - the company's CEO, Jack Dorsey, even met with Trump directly to offer explanations for what Trump perceives as censorship.
In an additional tweet on Thursday morning, Trump alleged that social media companies would be out of business if it weren't for him.
"The Fake News is not as important, or as powerful, as Social Media," he tweeted. "They have lost tremendous credibility since that day in November, 2016, that I came down the escalator with the person who was to become your future First Lady. When I ultimately leave office in six years, or maybe 10 or 14 (just kidding), they will quickly go out of business for lack of credibility, or approval, from the public."