A new day, a new quote from Donald Trump. The Republican presidential aspirant just said that he would like to “close up” the Internet to prevent Americans from joining jihadist movements. Trump is known for making outlandish claims but this one has many at a complete loss of words.
He believes that, as president of the United States, he can simply call up Bill Gates and ask him to pull the plug on the Internet. Trump floated this idea by a cheering crowd of supporters at the Pearl Harbor Day Rally aboard the USS Yorktown in South Carolina, Gizmodo noted.
While it is true that presidential aspirants have not provided any solid ideas to counter the growing extremist movement, Trump's ideas are by far the worst. First, he seems to have a complete lack of understanding of how the Internet works and, second, the complete lack of details for his plan make it plainly idiotic, as echoed by The Verge.
He said, “We 're losing a lot of people because of the Internet.” He also said, “We have kids who are watching the Internet and they want to be masterminds.”
“We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing the Internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people.”
He repeated his belief that proponents of freedom of speech in the Internet are foolish people several times. When he suggested closing the Internet in some way, he, of course, he did not specify how.
If Trump's claims are to be taken seriously, then it still remains unclear whether he would like the US government to censor the Internet or he simply does not know how the Internet functions as a whole.
