(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump was famously banned from Twitter for “inciting violence” ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection, when pro-Trump mobbed stormed the Capitol in protest of the 2020 presidential election results.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has since said it was a bad decision to ban Trump, saying it “alienated” an entire segment of the population.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently purchased Twitter for $44 billion, made headlines Tuesday when he said he would allow Trump back onto the platform.
NewsNation host Dan Abrams agrees with this move. Abrams argued on “Dan Abrams Live” that while everything Trump did and said on Twitter was wrong, banning him did nothing but create silos among people.
“I think some of what the former president said on Twitter and continues to say about the 2020 election is reprehensible. It’s also not true, but I also believe he should have the right to say it,” Abrams said. “Not just the legal right but that it makes no sense for Twitter or any other social media platform to ban him, prevent him from having his say and then create these silos in social media.”
Michael Starr Hopkins, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Obama and Clinton campaigns, disagreed with Abrams. He believes the Trump ban was just and should stay in force. He argues that because Twitter is a private company, Trump does not have a right to use it.
“I have had two different instances where the FBI has reached out to me and in one case had to move me, because of things that the president tweets, because his behavior, because of his rhetoric, because of the way that his supporters feel empowered by the things that he does and says,” Starr Hopkins said.
The full debate between Abrams and Starr Hopkins can be watched in the clip above.