Jason Miller, Chief Executive Officer of GETTR, the new social media platform which defends free speech and fights cancel culture, appeared on Thursday’s edition of Sway, the New York Times podcast hosted by Kara Swisher, for a wide-ranging interview that covered GETTR, social media censorship, January 6th, and the deplatforming of President Donald Trump by social media giants.

The following are some highlights of Miller’s interview, based on the transcript posted by the New York Times.

On the point of GETTR:

Miller: [W]hen it comes to the broader principles of what we’re trying to do with GETTR, really when we sat down to have one of the first conversations and said, number one, want to have a platform where people respect free speech. Secondly, want to have a platform where people reject this notion of cancel culture, which I think have really become far too prominent in all aspects of life, and I think it’s affecting people on the right, affecting people on the left. And the other aspect of it, too, is social media is not really fun anymore, and I want to try to bring some of that fun back to it.

On political censorship on other platforms:

Miller: [W]hen I was getting ready to launch Gettr, ran some market research, and this particular aspect that was focused on people who’d voted for President Trump and who followed President Trump on social media. And 40% of all people who voted for President Trump and 61% of people who actually followed President Trump on social media had followed somebody on social media not named President Trump who’d gotten deplatformed or censored or some other case. And so whether it’s the shadow banning or the temporary timeouts or the labels that get thrown on things, Facebook is kind of the big one when it comes to the labels being thrown on, where a lot of people are really concerned about, well, wait a minute, is this essentially political discrimination, or is this something that actually goes into standard moderation?

On censorship pendulum swings:

Swisher: And if it was — I want to understand where — you think that they are purposely trying to deprioritize conservative voices?

Miller: I do believe so, yes. I think, as we’ll get to probably a little bit more in depth here, even President Trump being completely deplatformed after January 6, I think that this last year, and even, look, even going into the Biden White House where we have the press secretary saying, hey, we’re working with these social media companies to identify certain posts, it might not be one. First of all, I don’t think it’s like some grand plan, but I think it’s these small encroachments on our free speech rights that concern me. Because look, right now, it’s the right of center space that has all the passion. That’s the really kind of the free speech debate. But 10, 20 years ago, a lot of the free speech debate was, say, in the gay rights community or the gay marriage. You go further back on that, we’re talking women’s rights.

On January 6th:

Miller: I think my thought is that, could President Trump have said something earlier as far as, hey, we need to go home, we need to do things? Absolutely. Do I think it would have fundamentally changed what happened that day? No. Nor do I think that anything that happened from President Trump’s remarks had anything to do with, quote unquote, “inciting people.” And so clearly, this was a pretty dark day in our nation’s history, and I think it was terrible. And there were lapses all the way across the board. I do not think that the president’s speech or any of his tweets on that day, though, contributed to this activity, this criminal activity happening.

Swisher: So you don’t think there’s any link between his tweets and what happened? Because he had been a persistent violator. They had sort of given him quite a wide berth up to that day. I had written a column in 2019 saying, what if he did this, this, this, and this, and then there was an attack on the Capitol? This is 2019, because you could sort of see the escalations.

Miller: No. And when I spoke with the president that night, it was very clear that he realized the severity of what had happened that day. And I remember he made a comment to me, something along the lines of, Jase, I mean, we’re the law and order party. I mean, what do these guys not get? I mean, this is not something that we would support or we’d be on board with.

On social media deplatforming Trump:

Miller: Because again, this is someone who received almost 75 million votes just a couple of months earlier. I think that’s effectively saying anyone who voted for President Trump that we want this voice silenced. And my concern is, if you go and say, hey, we’re kicking off President Trump, all that’s going to do is make people even more upset, more angry. People aren’t going to be like, oh, you know what, thanks, Jack. Now that I see that you’ve deplatformed President Trump, I’m going to recognize that I should just fall into line and agree with everything that Team Twitter or with Zuckerberg with Facebook or any of the other tech giants, what they’re saying. It’s going to further push people apart in this country, and I think that’s the wrong way to do it.

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Miller: But certainly, nothing that President Trump did, in my opinion, tripped that threshold to where you would say, you’re getting the digital death penalty. And even though you’re a sitting president of the United States, we’re not going to allow you to be able to communicate anymore in the way that everyone’s used to in kind of this digital town square, so to speak.

On reforming Section 230 of the United States Communications Decency Act:

Miller: But I do think that they’re going to be able to use that Section 230 as a shield. I do think that we need to reform that. Now, here’s kind of my point how this kind of gets into Gettr. So you have the — obviously, there needs to be a legislative fix, which I don’t think is ever going to get right any time soon. Obviously, a lot of the big tech companies have pretty powerful lobbies. I don’t really have confidence in Congress, whether it be Democrats or Republicans, really to fix this. I mean, look, you’ve got a lot of octogenarians up there don’t know the difference between a tweet and a truck. And they’re going to come tell us, here’s how you’re going to fix communications in the digital age? I’m skeptical. I’m also skeptical that the courts are going to come back with a solution. But if I had the magic wand, which I clearly don’t, I would reform Section 230, not completely get rid of it.

On political censorship on social media platforms:

Miller: I think that I have a right to be treated the same or fairly on a platform as someone who has a different political viewpoint. That’s the point. And that’s where I believe that we’ve seen political discrimination. And all these things that we see, whether it be, again, Facebook putting up the warning about this content or posts or videos being taken down on Twitter and getting into the way that they treat folks who are on the political right is completely different than how they treat folks on the political left.

On examples of political bias on social media:

Miller: I do think that there’s an inherent worldview that many of these big tech companies have that differs from, say, that of Trump supporters or people who are on the political right. And I think that kind of the knee-jerk reaction on some of these things, whether it be the Hunter Biden or regard to the origins of Covid, I think the reactions have acted in a political discriminatory type manner. That’s where I think so much of the anger and the passion comes from in the right of center space in the U.S. and how this has continued to fester.

On whether Trump will join GETTR and if there will be special rules for him:

Miller: Well, I can tell you, here’s what I can say about it. He wants to get back on social media. I mean, his statements and things get picked up now, but he’d much rather be on social media itself. And if you go back to 2016, he wouldn’t have gotten elected in 2016 if he didn’t have a way to circumvent the traditional media. I mean, that was kind of his superpower. I think he wants to get back on social media. I think he wants to be a part of something that grows and big, and I think a way to monetize on that as well.

Swisher: What’s he waiting? What, is he worried it’s a loser? I would assume that’s why.

Miller: No. Well, look, I think probably the reason why he didn’t jump on before we launched is he wanted to see how we’re going to do. I mean, there have been so many of these platforms, again, whether it’s Parler, these other platforms that have come along, that maybe they’ve had their brief moment. Maybe there was a hitch. Maybe something didn’t quite work. Probably wanted to see how we’re going to go and stand the test of time.

Swisher: Are you agreeing to special rules for him and what is posted about him?

Miller: Oh, there’s no such thing as special rules for anybody. The rules that we have are the rules that we have, and that doesn’t get changed for anybody.

Swisher: So you will not give him any kind of special editing rules or anything like that?

Miller: No, no. I mean, I have said that if you’re a content creator or if we can make it where if you’re in elected office or something like that, maybe you have longer video posts. But as far as there are no individuals have certain carve-outs or rules or anything like that.

Swisher: So not even Donald Trump? He will have to adhere to the whatever rules you have?

Miller: Yeah, everybody. Our rules are our rules, and we don’t have special rules for certain people.

On high-profile Democrats he’d like to see on GETTR:

Miller: I’d love to get Bernie Sanders. I mean, keep in mind that President Trump ended up getting somewhere in the neighborhood of, was it, 7% or 9% of Bernie Sanders supporters in the general election in 2016? I think there are actually a lot of Bernie supporters, kind of Bernie free speech advocates, that I think do appreciate what we’re trying to do. And then for the sake of having some fun, I’d love to get Rob Reiner, go and give me some of the Hollywood people to come in and have some fun with it.

Swisher: So Bernie Sanders and Rob Reiner. Who else? Give me two more.

Miller: Oh, I’d love to get President Biden, Vice President Harris, and I think then Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi would be great.

On GETTR’s moderation policy:

Miller: Number one is that we don’t discriminate based on political beliefs. As you’ve probably seen from some of my posts, people want to come out and say that I’m terrible or “Orange Man Bad,” or as I call it, Mondays, people are welcome to come on and do it. But we do have here — and I have the policy in front of me because I knew you were going to ask this — here’s what we don’t put up with — threatening or intimidating others; bullying, harassing, or stalking others; homophobic, racial, or sexual slurs; hate speech; encouraging criminal or illegal behavior; encouraging self-harm; sharing another person’s private information, including personal information, gender, ethnicity, address, doxxing; sexually explicit content; spamming others by sending numerous unsolicited messages; unauthorized advertisements, propaganda, or business services; content depicting or describing excessive violence, such as beheadings. And, look, I get some criticism from free speech advocates say, whoa, whoa, whoa, if you’re really a free speech outlet, why would you have any of this?

Swisher: Yes, that would be my question.

Miller: Look, the way that free speech normally works is — and again, this is kind of the oversimplification — is that your free speech rights work or extend up to the point where either they infringe on someone else’s free speech rights or they cross the line into criminal behavior. But in the spirit that this is a digital town square, the same thing where if someone was going nuts and doing that literally outside in a town square, there are certain ramifications of that. And so we want to make sure this is an inviting place where people aren’t being threatened, they’re not being doxxed with information, because we have to make sure that this is a place where people can come and share. Whether it be their political viewpoints or maybe things where the mainstream media or some of the other tech companies won’t let them talk about, we need to make sure that this is an environment that is safe to do that.

On trolls attacking during GETTR’s early days:

Miller: Look, every social media platform has gone through some aspect of this where you get the trolls who want to come in and try to post certain types of inappropriate content, for example. We’ve seen some content that’s very clearly, very clearly, some foreign actors at work. We’ve also seen people come in with — and again, these are largely bots or people with very political focus, but will come in try to post inappropriate content with the goal of trying to cause havoc or try to cause problems for Gettr. And so, look, if you violate the rules of the platform, then you’re violating the rules of the platform. But we have seen what are very clearly some left of center attempts to come and post inappropriate content and try to disrupt the platform.

Swisher: So is that discrimination based on political views? Shouldn’t they be able to do that?

Miller: But I’m saying it was very much a coordinated effort to come in, and I can track it from the activity spikes. And if someone right of center did that, they’d be yanked just as quick.

On Trump running for president again in 2024:

Miller: [W]hen I went over to see him last week, and he had sitting out — someone had dropped off these four massive binders with thousands of petition signatures trying to draft him to run in 2024. And we were talking about it, and just hearing the way that he’s talking very much sounds like someone who is more likely to run than not. But unfortunately, he didn’t give me any kind of secret wink or nod. I don’t think we’re going to hear anything from him formally until after the midterms. But to me, he sounds like someone who’s running.