Donald Trump is attacking Facebook again for no particular reason, calling it an "enemy of the people" and sending Meta's stock price tumbling.
Trump spent part of his Monday morning calling in to CNBC to talk about TikTok, and why he disagrees with a bill in Congress that would ban TikTok, saying the app poses a national security risk due to Chinese government ties.
But Trump isn't so concerned with TikTok as he is with Facebook, probably because Facebook banned him for two years following January 6th.
“The thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media,” Trump said in his CNBC call.
Trump added, "I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections."
The call happened before markets opened Monday morning, and subsequently, Meta shares fell 4%, and at one point were trading down 5%.
As for TikTok, Trump said "there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad" on the platform. “There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it," he said.
Both Twitter and Facebook suspended Trump's accounts on the grounds that he incited a violent insurrection on January 6th, and used both platforms to celebrate that violence and spread the lie that he won the 2020 election.
Twitter's ban on Trump was indefinite, however after Elon Musk took the company over in 2022 he reinstated Trump's account along with those of other alt-right and fringe personalities who had been suspended for various reasons. (And, late last year, Musk also reinstated the account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, despite years of his damaging lies about the Sandy Hook massacre.)
Facebook's Oversight Board ruled that indefinite bans were wrong, and the company ultimately decided to suspend Trump's account for two years — or until he no longer posed "a threat to public safety," which, arguably, he still does.
Trump got his accounts back by early 2023, but he hasn't been back on Twitter, opting instead to "tweet" on Truth Social, though his audience there was never as large as his Twitter following.
He, or members of his campaign, have been fairly active on Facebook, though, posting videos from his live appearances and putting out calls for volunteers.
He still seems to have a grudge against the company, though, and he'd likely do his best to make life difficult for Meta if he were to become president again.
Meta, so far, has not commented on Trump's remarks.
Previously: Facebook Is Suspending Trump for Two Years, Or Until He's No Longer a Danger to the Republic
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images