YouTube has indefinitely suspended Donald Trump from its platform and also barred his lawyer Rudy Giuliani from being able to monetize his content.
The Google-owned social media behemoth imposed a temporary ban on Trump’s channel two weeks ago, depriving his 3 million subscribers of content ‘in light of the ongoing potential for violence.’
It joined a raft of Silicon Valley heavyweights in censoring Trump for the Capitol riot over allegations that he fomented the deadly ‘insurrection’.
YouTube said said separately that Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani had also been taken off its Partner Program – which allows creators to make money off their videos.
Donald Trump was issued with a temporary ban on January 12 following the upload of a speech from Alamo, Texas that day. He told the Democrats: ‘Be careful what you wish for’ when discussing his impeachment
Donald Trump has almost 3 million subscribers on the Google-owned site
Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney and the man who spearheaded his failed legal battle to overturn the presidential election, had defended Wednesday’s rioters who stormed the US Capitol. Pictured: Appearing on Steve Bannon’s ‘War Room’ show
He is accused of repeatedly violating YouTube’s policy against posting misleading information about the US election.
The 76-year-old has posted videos titled ‘The Biden Crime Family’s Payoff Scheme’ and ‘Election Theft of the Century’ to his channel, which has around 600,000 subscribers.
The ban on making money off his clips comes as the former New York mayor faces a $1.3 billion lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems after alleging on social media that the firm had engaged in election fraud.
According to YouTube, Giuliani will be able to appeal the decision in 30 days – providing the underlying issues have been fixed.
Trump was blocked from uploading videos to YouTube two weeks ago following the upload of a speech in Texas in which he said he was at ‘zero risk’ of 25th amendment removal and warned Democrats ‘be careful what you wish for’.
YouTube will not specify which of Trump’s remarks broke their rules. They would only say that the offending statement incited violence.
Among his remarks at the event on January 12 was that it was the ‘impeachment hoax’ that is causing ‘tremendous anger’.
‘The 25th Amendment is of zero risk to me but will come back to haunt Joe Biden and the Biden administration. As the expression goes: Be careful what you wish for.
‘The impeachment hoax is a continuation of the greatest and most vicious witch hunt in the history of our country, and it is causing tremendous anger and division and pain – far greater than most people will ever understand, which is very dangerous for the USA, especially at this very tender time,’ he said.
The decision by YouTube to ban Trump indefinitely fuels an ongoing war between Trump fans and Big Tech.
His fans believe that he has been censored throughout his presidency and that the blanket ban by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others is the nail in the coffin.
Silicon Valley claims it is acting in the interests of democracy.
But while Trump is without his social media megaphone, he is still calling shots in the Republican party.
A large-scale defection to purge him from the party – once considered plausible – looks to be in tatters.
Many Republicans have been wary to defend Trump’s alleged role in the riot, which left five dead including a policeman.
But as the Senate prepares for an impeachment trial for Trump’s incitement of the riot, few seem willing to attack him.
After House Republicans who backed his impeachment found themselves facing intense backlash – and Trump’s lieutenants signaled the same fate would meet others who joined them – Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for an attempt to dismiss his second impeachment trial.
Trump and wife Melania arriving back in Florida on January 20, they rode out of Washington in Air Force One as Joe Biden was being inaugurated on the Capitol
YouTube’s tweet from earlier this month when it imposed a temporary ban on the president
Only five Republican senators rejected the challenge to the trial.
Trump’s conviction was considered a real possibility just days ago after lawmakers whose lives were threatened by the mob weighed the appropriate consequences – and the future of their party.
But the Senate vote on Tuesday is a sign that while Trump may be held in low regard in Washington following the riots, a large swath of Republicans is leery of crossing his supporters, who remain the majority of the party’s voters.
‘The political winds within the Republican Party have blown in the opposite direction,’ said Ralph Reed, chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a Trump ally.
‘Republicans have decided that even if one believes he made mistakes after the November election and on Jan. 6, the policies Trump championed and victories he won from judges to regulatory rollback to life to tax cuts were too great to allow the party to leave him on the battlefield.’
The vote came after Trump, who decamped last week to his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, began wading back into politics between rounds of golf.
He took an early step into the Arkansas governor’s race by endorsing former White House aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and backed Kelli Ward, an ally who won reelection as chair of Arizona’s Republican Party after his endorsement.
At the same time, Trump’s team has given allies an informal blessing to campaign against the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment.
After Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer backed impeachment, Republican Tom Norton announced a primary challenge. Norton appeared on longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast in a bid to raise campaign contributions.
On Thursday, another Trump loyalist, Rep. Matt Gaetz, plans to travel to Wyoming to condemn home-state Rep. Liz Cheney, a House GOP leader who said after the Capitol riot that ‘there has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.’
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. – a star with Trump’s loyal base — has encouraged Gaetz on social media and embraced calls for Cheney’s removal from House leadership.
Trump remains livid with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who refused to support Trump’s false charges that Georgia’s elections were fraudulent. Kemp is up for reelection in 2022, and Trump has suggested former Rep. Doug Collins run against him.
Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s decision not to seek reelection in 2022 opens the door for Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, to seek the seat. Several other Republicans, some far less supportive of the former president, are also considering running.
Trump’s continued involvement in national politics so soon after his departure marks a dramatic break from past presidents, who typically stepped out of the spotlight, at least temporarily.
Former President Barack Obama was famously seen kitesurfing on vacation with billionaire Richard Branson shortly after he left office, and former President George W. Bush took up painting.
Trump, who craves the media spotlight, was never expected to burrow out of public view.
‘We will be back in some form,’ he told supporters at a farewell event before he left for Florida. But exactly what form that will take is a work in progress.
Trump remains deeply popular among Republican voters and is sitting on a huge pot of cash – well over $50 million – that he could use to prop up primary challenges against Republicans who backed his impeachment or refused to support his failed efforts to challenge the election results using bogus allegations of mass voter fraud in states like Georgia.
‘POTUS told me after the election that he’s going to be very involved,’ said Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union. ‘I think he’s going to stay engaged. He’s going to keep communicating. He’s going to keep expressing his opinions. I, for one, think that’s great, and I encouraged him to do that.’
Aides say he also intends to dedicate himself to winning back the House and Senate for Republicans in 2022. But for now, they say their sights are on the trial.
‘We’re getting ready for an impeachment trial – that’s really the focus,’ said Trump adviser Jason Miller.
Trump aides have also spent recent days trying to assure Republicans that he is not currently planning to launch a third party – an idea he has floated – and will instead focus on using his clout in the Republican Party.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said he received a call from Brian Jack, the former White House political director, on Saturday at home to assure him that Trump had no plans for defection.
‘The main reason for the call was to make sure I knew from him that he’s not starting a third party and if I would be helpful in squashing any rumors that he was starting a third party. And that his political activism or whatever role he would play going forward would be with the Republican Party, not as a third party,’ Cramer said.
The calls were first reported by Politico.
But the stakes remain high for Trump, whose legacy is a point of fierce contention in a Republican Party that is grappling with its identity after losing the White House and both chambers of Congress. Just three weeks after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, Trump’s political standing among Republican leaders in Washington remains low.
‘I don’t know whether he incited it, but he was part of the problem, put it that way,’ said Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a strong Trump supporter, when asked about the Capitol siege and the related impeachment trial.
Tuberville did not say whether he would personally defend Trump in the trial, but he downplayed the prospect of negative consequences for those Republican senators who ultimately vote to convict him.
‘I don’t think there’ll be any repercussions,’ Tuberville said. ‘People are going to vote how they feel anyway.’
Trump maintains a strong base of support within the Republican National Committee and in state party leadership, but even there, Republican officials have dared to speak out against him in recent days in ways they did not before.
In Arizona, Ward, who had Trump’s backing, was only narrowly reelected over the weekend, even as the party voted to censure a handful of Trump’s Republican critics, including former Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain.
At the same time, Trump’s prospective impeachment sparked a bitter feud within the RNC.
In a private email exchange obtained by The Associated Press, RNC member Demetra DeMonte of Illinois proposed a resolution calling on every Republican senator to oppose what she called an ‘unconstitutional sham impeachment trial, motivated by a radical and reckless Democrat majority.’
Bill Palatucci, a Republican committeeman from New Jersey, slapped back.
‘His act of insurrection was an attack on our very democracy and deserves impeachment,’ Palatucci wrote.