Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, told Newsmax TV on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s call to heavily regulate social media like Twitter would be “problematic,” crediting a lack of regulation for the “rather robust free speech exposition” on the Internet.

The congressman said, “the president, no question about it, has used as the platform of Twitter to great advantage, and that’s, I guess, what has drawn the ire of some of the people in Silicon Valley. He's used it as a platform probably better than anyone would have thought he would have been able to do. But at the same time, look, for me, anything where we’re talking about regulating and taxing the Internet and social media platforms, it becomes problematic. This is what has allowed this rather robust free speech exposition to occur.”

Burgess, who was a practicing medical doctor before his election to Congress, added, that in “the early days of the coronavirus epidemic, China shut down a city of ten million people. Actually it was going to Twitter where I was able to get some information about what life was actually like for health care providers and hospitals in Wuhan, China.”

He concluded that “Twitter needs to pay attention,” saying, “they can’t have it both ways, it is either an open and free platform with open and free expression, or they allow fact-checkers that are clearly enemies of the president to be the fact-checkers.”