Michelle Obama calls on Facebook and other social media platforms to ban Trump permanently

Several hours after Facebook announced it would block President Donald Trump from making new posts until inauguration day at the earliest, former first lady Michelle Obama called on social media platforms to ban him from their platforms permanently.

“Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior-and go even further than they have by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection,” Obama said in a note posted to Twitter on Thursday.

Her post addressed many issues, including the stark contrast between how rioters were treated on Wednesday at the Capitol versus the violence Black Lives Matters protesters experienced over the summer, and said she prays Americans will give President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris a chance.

Until Wednesday, Trump had mostly been given a free pass by Twitter, Facebook, Google’s YouTube and other social networks, which have let him freely post lies and conspiracy theories during his presidency, sometimes only flagging that they presented disputed information.

Facebook’s move to block Trump followed a day of gradually escalating restrictions on his activity as rioters, spurred on by the president’s unfounded claims of election fraud, swarmed the Capitol and occupied offices there.

In addition, Twitter temporarily suspended Trump’s account on Wednesday, and Google‘s YouTube on Thursday imposed new restrictions on channels that post videos with false election claims.