YouTube deletes video on Trump's Big Tech lawsuit, blocks his CPAC speech from the platform

YouTube deleted the American Conservative Union's (ACU) video featuring former President Trump announcing his class-action lawsuit against Big Tech, citing an alleged violation of its COVID-19 terms and conditions.

The ACU, which hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), received "a strike" on their account from YouTube on July 9, preventing them from uploading new content for a week. This includes ACU's CPAC 2021 Part 2 in Dallas, Texas, and Trump's CPAC speech scheduled for Sunday, the organization said in a statement.

In the deleted YouTube video of Trump's announcement of a lawsuit against Big Tech, which includes Google, he also cited a medical study on hydroxychloroquine as a therapeutic for COVID-19.

ACU said in an email the organization received from YouTube, the tech giant "cited 'medical misinformation' concerning COVID-19 as the reason for removing the America UnCanceled episode. YouTube did not specify any statements made in the video that allegedly violated their policies."

"It is clear that YouTube censored CPAC because we stood with former President Donald Trump on his lawsuit against Big Tech," ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp said in the statement. "This is yet another example of Big Tech censoring content with which they disagree in order to promote the political positions they favor." ACU is a plaintiff in Trump's Big Tech lawsuit.

Trump has been banned from having accounts on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and he is suing the Big Tech companies (including YouTube's parent company, Google) over alleged First Amendment rights violations.