After a day of chaos and unacceptable violence in our nation’s capital, President Trump finds himself locked out of his Twitter account for the next 12 hours. The violation he committed is unclear since Twitter typically provides vague reasoning for its suspensions. A visit to the President’s page shows the removed tweets as “no longer available.”
Earlier today, President Trump composed several tweets calling for protesters to be peaceful and to respect law enforcement.
One of the removed tweets included an additional call for protesters to “go home with love & in peace.” At first, Twitter added one of their warning labels to the tweet and restricted users’ ability to reply, retweet, or like it “due to a risk of violence,” implying the tweet could have the potential to incite violence. A short while later, the social media site completely deleted the tweet. The removed tweet can be seen in the screenshot below.
The second tweet removed by Twitter from Trump’s account was a 1-minute video in which he calls for protesters to go home. The video can be seen here. A transcript of the video can be read below.
I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home at peace.
-President Donald J. Trump, 1/6/2021
Twitter sent out a tweet of their own explaining the President’s account’s suspension on the grounds of violating the site’s “Civic Integrity” policy. It is unclear what the third tweet, claimed to be removed by Twitter, contained.
Discussion about this post