Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi, Alexis Christoforous, and Rick Newman discuss President Trump's latest moves after Twitter fact checked the claims in his tweets.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Well, President Trump is not very happy with Twitter's latest fact check of two of his tweets. The site added a little blue bar at the bottom of some tweets inviting users to, quote, "get the facts."

So the president responded-- on Twitter, of course-- accusing the site of trying to stifle free speech. Our senior columnist Rick Newman joining us now with this. Looks like the president is picking a fight here, Rick, but just tell folks what this is about exactly.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, so Twitter has never fact checked President Trump before. He has said many untrue and dishonest things on Twitter, and there have been calls for a long time for Twitter to do something about it. They've resisted.

So this really heated up recently not because of the two tweets regarding absentee ballots but because Trump is now going after the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough in regard to a woman who was an aide when he was a member of Congress in 2001 who died in his office in Florida. It was an accident. She had some kind of unknown heart condition. She apparently fainted, hit her head on a desk, and died. I mean, it was tragic. She was 28 years old.

Well, Trump is now calling this a cold case, an unsolved mystery, and he's suggesting that Scarborough is somehow involved in this and that it might even have been a murder. This is all completely bogus, and the woman's surviving family members have asked Trump to stop it because it's obviously hurtful and cruel to the family members. And he-- even this morning he is going after it again, calling it a cold case. So he won't stop.

So there have been a lot of calls for Twitter to do something about this, which could be banning Trump from Twitter or putting some kind of mark on these tweets regarding this. That is not what Twitter is doing. They are not addressing this issue with the woman who died in 2001. All they did was go after two other tweets Trump put out recently over mail-in ballots. We know that he says this is fraudulent. It is not fraudulent.

So these are the two tweets that Twitter went after. And they haven't explained their rationale, but you can kind of guess that their rationale is to intervene in this way when it involves something relating to the election rather than one claim by a public figure such as Trump against somebody else.

It's a mess. Twitter has to know this is going to just be a firestorm, but this is what they're doing for now.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, speaking of the election, I mean, how does this play out in terms of public perception for Trump as we move closer to that November date? I mean, he's got enough on his hands, one would think, trying to deal with this pandemic, and now he's picking a fight with Twitter.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, I think that's probably deliberate. Trump seems to think that picking fights with just about anybody works to his advantage, and let's keep in mind what he's trying to do here. He's probably trying to distract everybody from what's going on in the economy, which is terrible, and what's going on with the pandemic, which is we're not doing so great.

I mean, just for comparison's sake, New Zealand today said they no longer have anybody in the hospital for COVID-19. They have essentially beaten the virus. And here in the United States, we still have thousands of people in the hospital. Cases are rising in some states. We're about to hit 100,000 deaths, and we've not done a good job. Trump is getting increasingly bad marks in terms of his handling of the virus, and what he's probably trying to do here is just find some kind of dust-up or fight he can pick to distract people from the two things he doesn't want anybody to notice, a terrible economy and, you know, lackluster or subpar handling of the coronavirus. So, you know, Trump's deflection strategy is, when in doubt, pick a fight, and he's picking a bunch of them right now.

BRIAN SOZZI: Rick, what's the probability that the president is kicked off of Twitter ahead of the election? And for some reason if he is kicked off, does that push him onto Instagram, TikTok, Facebook? Where does he go?

RICK NEWMAN: I can't imagine that Twitter would do that. I mean, the response to this controversy with the, you know, the quote-- the bogus cold case, I mean, it's really tepid. All they're doing is adding a line at the bottom. And remember, of all of Trump's tweets, it's only two tweets that they've decided to put this line in there. And all they're saying is, you know, this line basically is get the facts on absentee voting, and then they link to a couple of news stories.

So they're not-- they could be blocking these tweets. They're not doing that. And they seem to have a very, very selective criteria for when they're going to get involved here. So I think there's no chance Twitter could ban Trump. And that would, you know, probably turn Trump into an even bigger victim in the eyes of-- in his own eyes and some of his supporters, and he would have to find another platform. But I don't see any chance it's going to happen.

BRIAN SOZZI: And, Alexis, you have a new "Electionomics" podcast hitting, right?

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, Rick and I, we sat down yesterday with Lee Miringoff. He's the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. And, Rick, I thought it was a really good conversation, and it's kind of ironic what we were talking about. At the time we were talking about it, I think what was happening with President Trump's tweets was happening in real time.

But one of the things we discussed with Lee was mail-in ballots and how President Trump does not want mail-in ballots, and he's also threatening to maybe pull the convention from North Carolina if the governor there doesn't allow it to go on at full capacity.

RICK NEWMAN: Right. And the polling by Marist and other shows that voters, they want mail-in ballots. I mean, especially if the pandemic is still an issue come November, I mean, people want, you know, the ability to vote from home and just mail it in for safety.

I was also interested, Alexis. We asked him, why should people trust the polls in 2020 given that they got the-- they got the outcome wrong in 2016 for the most part? And he had some very interesting things to say about that, how polling has changed a little bit and what polling actually gets right. So I think there's a lot of stuff for people to check out there.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, so do do that if you have a little extra time this week. "Electionomics" is available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.