Bernie Sanders Uncomfortable With Trump's Ban On Twitter: 'It's An Issue'

Sen. Bernie Sanders I-VT explained on a podcast on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump’s permanent Twitter ban makes him feel uncomfortable and eerie about what this could mean for the country.

The 79-year-old was featured on The New York Times’ podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show” where he dived deep into first amendment issues that he’s never spoken on before. He was asked to explain his opinion on censorship issues.

“Look, you have a former president in Trump, who is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn’t believe in the rule of law. This is a bad news guy,” Sanders explained. “But if you’re asking me, do I feel particularly comfortable that the president, the then-president of the United States, could not express his views on Twitter? I don’t feel comfortable about it.”

While the ban didn’t particularly sit right with him, the Senator does believe there needs to be some type of balance when it comes to social media and sharing political opinions without it becoming a place where hate speech is spread.

“So how do you balance that? I don’t know, but it is an issue that we have got to be thinking about. Because of anybody who thinks yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned, and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view,” Sanders told Klein.

After the Jan. 6 attacks at the Capitol, Trump lost his social media privileges to Twitter first, and then other platforms, like Facebook, followed due to the possibility of more incited violence by the former president.

"So I don't like giving that much power to a handful of high tech people. But the devil is obviously in the details and it's something we're going to have to think long and hard on, and that is how you preserve First Amendment rights without moving this country into a big lie mentality and conspiracy theories," he concluded.