Meta looking into ending Trump’s suspension, per report

(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump’s two-year suspension from Facebook and Instagram is technically set to end on Saturday, and the parent company is reportedly mulling over the decision of whether to reinstate.

The former president’s accounts were suspended after the social media platforms determined that Trump stoked violence ahead of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol in 2021.

Meta—the parent company that runs Facebook and Instagram—will announce a decision about the former president’s social media accounts “in the coming weeks,” company spokesperson Andy Stone told Forbes.

At the end of the suspension, the company will assess whether Trump’s “risk to public safety” has subsided, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s then-vice president of global affairs, wrote in a June 2021 blog post. Clegg is now the president of global affairs.

In May 2021, a quasi-independent oversight board upheld the suspension but noted the company could not ban him indefinitely.

In its decision, the board agreed that two of Trump’s Jan. 6 posts “severely violated” the content standards of both Facebook and Instagram.

In one post, Trump said to rioters: “We love you. You’re very special.” In another, Trump called them “great patriots” and told them to “remember this day forever.”

When the suspension was first announced, the former president called Facebook’s decision “an insult” in a news release.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!” Trump said.

Trump was also banned from Twitter in January 2021 for tweets regarding falsehoods about the 2020 election and violence at the Capitol. He was reinstated late last year by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, but has yet to post on the platform since then.

After the social media companies removed him from their platforms, Trump helped create his own social media platform called Truth Social, which went live last February.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.