President Donald Trump asked British Prime Minister Keir Starmer not to use new social media laws to censor his Truth Social platform in the United Kingdom during a joint press conference in Scotland on Monday.
Truth Social, the flagship product of Trump's media company and the subject of a number of ethics questions about stock ownership, has been used as the president's primary platform to announce policies, rant about politicians and judges who annoy him, make endorsements, and generally air out what's on his mind, ever since he was kicked off the platform previously known as Twitter following the January 6 riot — even though under tech billionaire Elon Musk he was allowed back onto it.
"There are new powers here to censor your site," a British reporter told Trump during the presser.
"To censor my site? You mean Truth? Truth Social?" said Trump. "Well, I don't think he's going to censor myself because I say only good things. Will you please uncensor my site?"
"Yeah, we don't," said Starmer. "We're not censoring anyone. We've got some measures which are there to protect children, in particular from sites like suicide sites. We've had too many cases in the United Kingdom of young children taking their own lives. And when you look through their social media, they've been accessing sites which talk about suicide and, you know, encouraging if you like children down that road. And that is what we want to stop. Nothing about censoring free speech."
"Free speech in this country has been for a very long time. We're very, very proud of it. We will protect it forever," Starmer continued. "But at the same time, I personally feel very strongly that we should protect our young teenagers. And that's what it usually is, from things like suicide sites. I don't see that as a free speech issue. I see that as a child protection issue."
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