Former US President Donald Trump has ramped up attacks on mainstream media and Big Tech companies preventing him from having a voice on social media.
The Republican leader both released a statement and took part in a phone interview on Fox News on Sunday.
"I am proud to inform you that the Lamestream Media has hit the lowest approval ratings ever recorded," Trump said in the statement. "I think it would be fair to assume that I had something to do with that."
The former president has regularly attacked media outlets giving him a negative coverage ever since he ran for office in the 2016 presidential election.
Mainstream media outlets are "not only dishonest and corrupt," he said said, but "they are truly, according to a recent poll, the enemy of the people."
"In a similar category, CNN’s ratings are down a whopping, and record-setting, 79% and likewise, horrible numbers at MSDNC (Joe Scarborough and his lovely wife, Mika, are at record lows)," Trump concluded. "These developments are great news for the American People!"
‘Conservative voice’
But Trump spoke with his favorite TV channel, Fox News, to slam Twitter and Facebook, which have banned him over inciting violence during his supporters’ raid on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“[T]hey're taking away your freedom of speech. They are taking away your right to speak. They're taking away everything. And they get powers. They have a Section 230, it's called, and that gives them immunity. That gives them protection,” he said.
The real estate tycoon further branded himself as a “conservative voice” under crackdown by the social media giants.
“I mean, they -- they're immune from so many different things. But they're not immune from this lawsuit, because what they have done is such a violation of the Constitution, a violation like we have never seen before. You look at -- they take me down,” Trump said. “They take all conservative voices down, or most of them. If they find them, they take them down.”
The billionaire businessman filed a class-action lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, Google, and their CEOs on Wednesday.
“A president of the United States that has a following like nobody's seen before, we're not allowed to do that. And so we have to use other methods, until this lawsuit is -- it's going to wind its way through the courts. I think it's going to be very successful.”
Trump officially lost the 2020 presidential election to now-President Joe Biden but refused to accept the results, citing election fraud.