President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn to board Marine One at the White House in Washington on Dec. 18, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
YouTube took down a newly recorded interview with former President Donald Trump in Google’s latest action against conservatives.
A Newsmax spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that the company was told the Feb. 17 interview was removed because it violated YouTube’s community guidelines.
A Google spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email: “We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, and we enforce our Community Guidelines consistently, regardless of speaker and without regard to political viewpoints.”
“In accordance with our presidential election integrity policy, we removed this video from the Newsmax TV channel,” the spokesperson added.
The set of policies cited is aimed at preventing spam, scams, and deceptive practices, the California-based company says. Included is a policy implemented late last year. Google said in announcing the policy that it would remove “content that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.”
Trump during the Newsmax interview alleged he won the 2020 election, among other claims.
Trump made similar claims in interviews with Fox News this week. Those remain on YouTube.
The former president also spoke with One America News. That network hasn’t uploaded videos for approximately one month.
Newsmax later posted a video of host Greg Kelly, who interviewed Trump, summarizing and playing portions of the interview. That video remains live.
YouTube ramped up actions against prominent conservatives and others last year ahead of the presidential election, escalating enforcement even more just before New Year.
YouTube in late 2020 blocked Trump campaign ads, alleging election fraud, and removed a statement one of his lawyers gave during a congressional hearing.
In January, YouTube removed content from Trump’s channel and suspended it because the videos were in violation of “policies for inciting violence,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
YouTube later extended the suspension, which continues to this day.
In addition, Twitter and Facebook have banned Trump.
Trump has floated starting his own social media platform, telling Newsmax that “we’re negotiating with a number of people, and there’s also the other option of building your own site.”
Trump said he was considering moving to Parler, an upstart competitor to Twitter, but believed the newer platform couldn’t handle the traffic he’d bring.
Parler was kicked off Amazon’s servers last month but recently reemerged after reaching a deal with a new host.
Parler’s new CEO said recently that Trump is welcome on the website, just like anybody else.
“If Donald Trump wants to come here and participate in free speech, he would be welcome on the platform,” Mark Meckler said.
Mimi Nguyen Ly and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.