President Donald Trump went on a midnight gloat after winning a massive settlement with YouTube over his post-Jan. 6 ban from the video platform.
After YouTube agreed to pay him $24.5 million, all of the Big Tech companies have now settled lawsuits the president filed against them in 2021 over bans imposed in the wake of the deadly U.S. Capitol riot. Trump shared an AI-generated post calling for other conservatives to be paid for their own bans from social media platforms.
"YouTube SURRENDERS! Pays Trump $24.5 MILLION for illegal ban!" Trump's post on Truth Social reads, along with an emergency siren emoji and an image of a smiling Trump and what appears to be YouTube CEO Neal Mohan holding an oversized check. "This MASSIVE victory proves Big Tech censorship has consequences. Every shadowbanned patriot deserves justice!"
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), published multiple reports on alleged efforts to suppress conservative viewpoints on social media, but Twitter owner Elon Musk allowed Trump and other banned right-wing accounts back onto the platform after he bought the company and renamed it X.
"Trump fought for free speech and won!" the post adds. "Repost if ALL banned conservatives should be paid!"
Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed in January to pay $25 million after similar bans, with most of that sum going to Trump's presidential library. X agreed to pay $10 million, with most of it going directly to the president.
Executives at Google, which owns YouTube, had hoped to keep their settlement below the amount paid by rival Meta. About $22 million from the amount toward a nonprofit fund set up to pay for construction of a ballroom at the White House.
Another $2.5 million will go to other plaintiffs on the case, including the American Conservative Union and writer Naomi Wolf.
The Trump administration apparently engaged in its own suppression of speech earlier this month when Federal Communication Commission Chairman Brendan Carr publicly pressured ABC to drop talk show host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about slain right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, but the late-night host returned to the airwaves a week later in the face of public backlash.