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Former President Donald Trump raged against YouTube on Friday only hours after the video platform removed an interview he did with the “Full Send Podcast” earlier in the week.
“Whatever happened to free speech in our Country? Incredibly, but not surprisingly, the Big Tech lunatics have taken down my interview with the very popular NELK Boys so that nobody can watch it or in any way listen to it,” the 45th president said in a statement released by his Save America PAC.
“In the 24 hours that it was up it set every record for them, by many times,” he continued. “Interestingly on the show I told them this would happen because Big Tech and the Fake News Media fear the truth, they fear criticism about Biden, and above all, they don’t want to talk about the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election, all topics discussed.”
Trump went on to add that media censorship in the US is headed in a direction similar to Russia, where he said “people are not allowed to know that they’re fighting a war with Ukraine.”
“Are we going to allow this to happen? Our Country is going to Hell!” Trump said, pointing to soaring inflation, the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, ongoing border crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We need freedom of speech again, we don’t have it and it’s getting worse every day!”
The video was taken down by YouTube Thursday evening, according to “Full Send” host Kyle Forgeard.
He shared a screenshot on Twitter of an email YouTube sent informing him of the video removal, which detailed that it was taken down for violating the company’s “misinformation policy.”
The former president appeared to warn that the video might be taken down during the interview, telling the podcast hosts, “If you put up this whole interview, let’s see what happens when Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and all of them take it down,” according to Wired.
If viewers attempt to watch the podcast episode, they are greeted with a mostly blank screen that says, “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
While the email sent to Forgeard did not detail what exactly violated the policy, YouTube later told The Post the video was removed “for violating our election integrity policy, which prohibits content containing false claims that widespread fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.
“We allow content with sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic context, which the video we removed did not provide,” YouTube continued.
During the interview, Trump and the hosts spoke on a variety of topics, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 2020 presidential election and how the Village People’s 1978 disco hit “YMCA” is his top pick for when he DJs parties at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“The election fraud was massive,” Trump reportedly said. “I call it ‘the crime of the century.’ We’re doing a book on it.”
The former president reiterated his baseless claims about the stolen election a separate time, saying, “You should be scared because we have incompetent people heading up our country. [People] who, frankly, got there through a fraudulent election. I think it’s serious.”
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