On Friday, Facebook dealt another blow to free expression when it announced that Donald Trump would be suspended for two years from its Facebook and Instagram platforms — a suspension that the company warned would be reinstated if certain conditions were met.

It was the highest penalty possible under cowardly Facebook’s new content moderation rules, and it was a compliment of sorts for the 74-year-old former Republican president, who continues to live rent-free in the heads of Democrats and Big Tech titans everywhere.

The penalty was announced by Facebook VP of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, the former British Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister who got bounced out of Parliament in 2017. Zuckerberg no doubt got him for a song. “Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension,” said Clegg, “we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols.”

It’s a pathetic state of affairs indeed when a political palooka like Nick Clegg can tell a former U.S. president what he’s allow to say and when. Trump had a combined 56 million followers on Facebook and Instagram when he was banned for having questioned whether Sleepy Joe Biden got all 81 million of those votes on the up-and-up.

It’s interesting — and to Trump supporters, infuriating — to note that Hillary Clinton also questioned the results of a presidential election — the one she lost to Trump. We’re still waiting for her to be banned for having told everyone who cared to listen that the 2016 election was “stolen,” and that Trump was an “illegitimate” president. While it may be true that Hillary didn’t take to Facebook directly to make those repeated claims, they were certainly spread across social media by her surrogates.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker has an excellent analysis of Facebook’s decision, in which he notes this doozy from the Oversight Board: “The Board found that the two posts by Mr. Trump on January 6 severely violated Facebook’s Community Standards and Instagram’s Community Guidelines. ‘We love you. You’re very special’ in the first post and ‘great patriots’ and ‘remember this day forever’ in the second post violated Facebook’s rules prohibiting praise or support of people engaged in violence.”

One wonders whether we’re allowed to praise or support our police or military on Facebook, as they’re repeatedly and necessarily “engaged in violence.”

Asks Hinderaker, “Haven’t a great many Democrats praised Black Lives Matter and even Antifa when they engaged in riots, arson and violence far more destructive than the Capitol intrusion of January 6, which was actually invited by some Capitol guards, and which was almost entirely peaceful? They certainly have.”

As for Trump, he had a few words for Zuck and his speech-suppressing stooges: “Facebook’s ruling is an insult to the record-setting 75M people, plus many others, who voted for us in the 2020 Rigged Presidential Election,” he said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!”