Twitter Pulls Down Three Trump Tweets, Locks Down His Account for 12 Hours, Threatens ‘Permanent Suspension’ Over Civic Integrity, Violent Threat Violations (Updated)
Photo credit: Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images
Twitter enforced its strongest sanctions on Donald Trump yet, deleting, locking down, and warning a full ban could result after the president sent a series of egregiously irresponsibly tweets both fueling and excusing the unprecedented assault and violence at the Capitol by his right-wing extremist supporters.
On Wednesday evening, Twitter fully deleted three of Trump’s tweets about the MAGA mob assault, including a breathtakingly false tweet claiming he won a “sacred landslide” and implicitly blaming the victim, Congress, for its own ransacking because its political leaders — and his own vice president — dared to go forward with certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Then, minutes later, Twitter posted a short thread linking to its civic integrity policy and explaining that the deletions were for “repeated and severe violations” of it. Twitter then divulged that it was temporarily freezing Trump’s account for 12 hours once he takes the offending posts down. And, finally, the social media giant issued perhaps its most pointed warning that Trump faced “permanent suspension” if he continued to incite violence among his political supporters.
As a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C., we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump Tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy. https://t.co/k6OkjNG3bM
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 7, 2021
This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 7, 2021
Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 7, 2021
Update, 2:25 a.m. Thursday, January 7: Bloomberg’s technology editor, Vlad Savov reported early on Thursday morning that Trump had deleted the three offending posts that had been deleted by the platform, officially starting the clock on his 12-hour suspension.
.@realDonaldTrump has deleted the tweets that led to his suspension, starting the 12-hour countdown to him being able to post again, Twitter says.
So now we have The First Tweet Back to look forward to.
— Vlad Savov (@vladsavov) January 7, 2021
