We have often wondered, if someone made Trump an offer: “You can have one or the other, you can either be placed back on Twitter, or you can be president again for four years but without Twitter as president or the rest of your life.” Pick, sir. We have often wondered which one he’d pick.

It is not obvious, is it? The fact that it is not obvious says more about the man than all the books that will ever be written. He needs the world’s attention on a daily basis, far more than he needs the “perks” of the presidency (though immunity from prosecution might cinch that deal real quick). “America first” is an insulting joke. It was and remains Trump, first, second, last. Always. Trump first means he speaks to everyone, all the time, he will be heard around the world.

Now he is suing Twitter and Facebook because he believes the government (the judiciary) has the right to order private companies how to distribute their services, which sounds straight out of the communist manifesto to us:

Trump announcement tomorrow isn’t about a new social media platform, it’s about lawsuits related to ones that kicked him off, according to a Trump aide.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 6, 2021

Trump will lose.

He believes this is about First Amendment rights. It’s actually about “No Shoes, No Shirts, No restraint in sociopathic calls for violence, No Service.” (Remember, the First Amendment is entirely different than the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits companies from discriminating based on race, religion…)

Everyone who has signed up for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, any of them, has had to click on Terms of Service. Most people don’t read them, but all are held to them. Some leaders even get extra leeway because Twitter believes that their voice is necessary, good or bad, to inform the people. Up to a limit, and Trump stretched that limit even before he was president.

Trump will tell the judge, “look at this guy, look at this guy, look at this guy, they weren’t banned!” And the judge will likely say “Take it up with Twitter, that’s their problem.”

Trump will lose.

The fact that Trump will lose, and should lose, doesn’t mean that these companies are far too powerful. They are in a unique industry, the product they provide is the monopoly itself. The value comes from everyone being on the same platform. There is no point in signing up for a social media company if all your friends are on another one – even if the new one is better. These are industries that capitalism never anticipated, companies that only sell the monopoly.

There are two answers. One, make them utilities, where the government does have some control over them, what they can do with their information, and some constitutional rights do apply (but not violent threats, not letting Trump back on). Or, another alternative is busting them up with anti-trust laws and forcing the new companies to use compatible software, so people do have a choice in which they platform they use but the monopolistic power is taken away by cross-sharing platforms.

Amazon is also getting close to the same problem because no company could ever compete with one already established as the monopoly. Vendors could never match storage capacity. Bezos’s business model was never to become an internet “store.” He wanted to become the 2020 version of the 1900 Sears Catalogue, the one that went out on trains to small towns across the country, allowing people in faraway places to buy whatever they wanted from wherever they lived.

We do live in a time when companies are becoming small nations unto themselves, lead by owners that control more resources than most countries and that is not a healthy thing. Trump’s lawsuit will not have any bearing on the current situation, nor should it. But something must be done.

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