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Trump Lashes Out on Twitter Ahead of Social Media 'Summit'

Associated Press

   President Donald Trump is lashing out at social media companies and the
   press ahead of his White House "Social Media Summit" gathering of
   mostly conservative groups.
   Trump tweeted Thursday morning against social media companies, the
   press and his Democratic rivals, while calling himself ``so great
   looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!''
   Trump says a ``big subject" of Thursday's summit ``will be the
   tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced
   by certain'' companies.
   Google, Facebook and Twitter weren't invited to the event, their
   representatives have confirmed.
   Trump has an estimated 61 million followers on Twitter. He has accused
   Twitter of making it ``very hard for people to join me'' and ``very
   much harder for me to get out the message.'' He has suggested the
   companies may be acting illegally and should be sued by U.S.
   regulators.
   Trump frequently lashes out at the press, and did so again Thursday,
   tweeting that, ``Fake News is not as important, or as powerful, as
   Social Media'' and predicting outlets ``will quickly go out of
   business'' when he leaves office. He asserted that ``even Social Media
   would be driven out of business'' if he loses in 2020.
   The White House conference offers Trump a chance to play to his
   conservative base in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

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