Former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich has called for the arrest of the man who owns the majority shares of X/Twitter. Elon Musk must be stopped from providing free speech, he said..
Reich wrote Musk is “out of control,” in the Guardian newspaper.
“He may be the richest man in the world. He may own one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him,” Reich wrote. Threatening him was arrest is just one of the things that the United States government can do to stop Musk from providing a free speech platform, he said.
The main offense by Musk is that he supports Donald Trump for president. Musk, a former Democrat who once supported Barack Obama, has since seen how Democrats in power suppressed free speech, especially evident during the 2020 presidential cycle, when the Democrats controlled Twitter.
“Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth – he’s the richest person in the world – into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world,” Reich wrote.
“Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter. He publicly endorsed Donald Trump last month. Before that, Musk helped form a pro-Trump super political action committee. Meanwhile, the former US president has revived his presence on the X platform,” Reich wrote.
Then, Reich stated something shocking to him, a Democrat: “Musk just hired a Republican operative with expertise in field organizing to help with get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of Trump.” And even more shocking, Trump may work with Musk, if elected, to stand up a government efficiency commission.
“Trump and Musk have both floated the idea of governing together if Trump wins a second term. ‘I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission,’ Musk said in a conversation with Trump earlier this month streamed on X. ‘And I’d be happy to help out on such a commission.'”
Musk’s crime? Supporting a candidate for president. In the world of Democrats, this is a crime punishable by arrest and possible imprisonment, not unlike what the Democrats have already done to Trump himself, with multiple charges and court cases intended to prevent him from effectively running for president.
In France, authorities last week arrested the developer of another social media site, Telegram. In Brazil, authorities have said anyone caught using X/Twitter could face a daily fine of nearly $9,000 for every day that a citizen has been using X/Twitter. In Brazil, there are an estimated 22 million X users.
“Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X,” Reich stated. He also called for a global boycott of Tesla and that advertisers pull their support of X.
“Global regulators may be on the way to doing this, as evidenced by the 24 August arrest in France of Pavel Durov, who founded the online communications tool Telegram, which French authorities have found complicit in hate crimes and disinformation. Like Musk, Durov has styled himself as a free speech absolutist,” Reich said.
Read Reich’s point of view at this link.