President Donald Trump was suspended from numerous online platforms after he inspired an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. And YouTube will now settle a lawsuit brought by Trump and other right-wingers over their suspensions.
Google, which owns YouTube, has agreed to pay $24.5 million, with $22 million going to Trump and an organization called the Trust for the National Mall, which is covering the cost of a White House ballroom through private funds. The remaining $2.5 million will be allocated to other plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf, according to the Wall Street Journal.
If you’re wondering why the parties landed on $24.5 million rather than a round number, that’s because Google wanted to pay less than Meta, the owner of Facebook, which paid $25 in a similar lawsuit settled earlier this year. Most of Meta’s settlement will go to a private foundation that’s ostensibly building Trump’s future presidential library. X, previously known as Twitter during the Jan 6 insurrection, agreed to pay about $10 million earlier this year over claims that Trump was censored.
Trump’s YouTube channel was restored in March 2023, and it was used to spread campaign messages and pro-Trump news clips in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. While banned from major platforms, Trump spent his time spinning up his own social media platform, Truth Social, which is where he primarily sends out his unhinged proclamations to this day.
Incredibly, none of these settlements really need to be paid from a strict legal perspective. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the lawsuit against Twitter was dismissed in 2022, and the lawsuits against Meta and YouTube were closed by a judge in 2023. When X paid out to Trump in February, that set off a domino effect, and the president’s lawyers sought to reopen the cases against Meta and YouTube.
Trump has been cleaning up with major companies lately, extracting huge payouts from firms that have no real legal obligation to pay him. By all accounts, those companies are making calculated decisions to reduce government pressure on their businesses. And while that might be a logical calculation, it’s a bad precedent in a country that’s supposed to be a liberal democracy.
Paramount, the parent company of CBS, agreed to pay Trump $16 million over a frivolous claim that 60 Minutes had deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris in an attempt to help her with the 2024 election. The settlement happened just before Paramount and Skydance received approval to merge, something late-night host Stephen Colbert characterized as a “bribe.” Colbert’s show was later cancelled, and it will end when his contract is up in the spring.
Reached for comment Monday, a spokesperson for Google didn’t provide an explanation beyond saying they would point us to the settlement “as our response.”