Facebook oversight board member on Capitol rioters: Trump was ‘egging them on’

A member of Facebook’s oversight board said Sunday that despite former President Trump’s calls for peace during the Jan. 6 riot, he was encouraging a mob of his supporters that overtook the Capitol in statements on social media that resulted in his ban from Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook board member Michael McConnell told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that Trump “made his bed, and now he can sleep in it” in response to criticism of the Facebook board’s decision last week to uphold its ban of the former president.

“President Trump issued those statements as a mob was ripping through the Capitol, as members of Congress were cowering in fear,” McConnell said.

The president made “perfunctory [calls] asking for peace, but really he was just egging them on,” he said.

Trump was banned from the platform following statements he made during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol in which he resisted calls to tell his supporters to leave the building.

McConnell, a former judge, went on to brush aside criticism that the former president’s right to free speech was being violated, pointing out that the First Amendment does not apply to speech on privately owned platforms.

“It’s of course up to Congress what antitrust laws will be, but this is not a free speech issue,” he contended.

“No judge in the country would rule” in favor of the former president, McConnell added.

He also criticized Facebook, however, saying the social media giant’s rules “are in shambles.”

“We gave them a certain amount of time to get their house in order,” McConnell said. “They needed some time because their rules are a shambles. They are not transparent. They are unclear. They are internally inconsistent. So we made a series of recommendations about how to make their rules clearer and more consistent.”

Facebook’s oversight board ruled Wednesday that the former president had “created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible” with his posts during the riot that unfolded on the grounds of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Within six months, however, the board ruled that the company must “reexamine” the decision to ban Trump from the platform, which it said had been applied in an “arbitrary” manner.

–Updated at 11:45 a.m.