Donald Trump wants Bill Gates to 'close the Internet', Jeff Bezos to pay tax

Only the foolish oppose this on free speech grounds, says putative president

United States Presidential candidate Donald J Trump has called on Bill Gates to shut down parts of the Internet, to prevent radicals spreading their ideas.

That seems to be the thrust of remarks made by Trump at a campaign rally on Monday in the United States.

As the video below shows, Trump told a rally that “We are losing a lot of people to the Internet. We have to do something. 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 that internet up in some way.”

“Some people will say, 'Freedom of speech, Freedom of speech',” Trump added, before saying “These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”

#DonaldTrump advocates closing up the Internet 2 stop the process of thought/free speech. So Communist China-like. pic.twitter.com/hRab3xpVcK

— NotBuffytheVMPslayer (@NotBUFFY_VS) December 8, 2015

Trump picked a fight with Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos today, too, in the following Tweets.

The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015

The @washingtonpost loses money (a deduction) and gives owner @JeffBezos power to screw public on low taxation of @Amazon! Big tax shelter

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015

Trump's remarks about the Internet were off-the-cuff, but serious. As serious as the policy he announced “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”

God Bless America. ®

Trump's speeches probably sound better in the original German.

— Dave Weinstein (@dhw) December 7, 2015