![]() ![]() Trump tweeted: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” Twitter saw that as tacit approval for the mob that ransacked the Capitol. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” Trump tweeted: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. ![]() Rather than point to direct calls for violence, the company argued two relatively innocuous tweets, by Trump standards, had to be viewed in a larger context. Twitter referenced its “Glorification of Violence” policy in a long blog post assessment of his tweets it posted online Friday. The decisive action by Twitter, a publicly traded company, came in contrast to the much slower official action of lawmakers, where Democrats moved toward impeach, but it was unclear if Washington would agree to definitively censure Trump and bar him from holding future office for sparking a mob to storm Capitol Hill. All that remains of Trump’s Twitter page is a blank space and a message that the account has been suspended.Īfter a warning and 12-hour hold on Trump’s account earlier this week, the company announced its decision to permanently suspend Friday, citing the “risk of the further incitement of violence.”Īfter close review of recent Tweets from the account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence. It’s not certain if it will remain quite the political force if they’re walled off from the rest of the social media world.įor Americans used to waking up to read about what after-hours outrage the President pushed on social media, it’s a strange moment of relief, elation and silence. Google told CNN Friday it would remove Parler from its app store. “Taking him down by taking him off these platforms and not giving him, showing that he is powerless to do anything about it and then ultimately sending him back to Mar-a-Lago is going to diminishes appeal to these people who really seek some kind of authoritarian leader,” Conway said.įor Trump supporters addicted to his brash ALL CAPS, 280-characters-or-less missives, this could signal a move further to the fringes of the social media universe, like Parler, the upstart Twitter clone where conspiracy theories are welcome. George Conway, the anti-Trump activist and former Republican who made opposing and taunting the President on Twitter a cottage career, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper the President’s humbling on the platform has real importance in curbing his power over the type of people who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday. It’s not yet clear if he can start new accounts in the future.īut for a man who lived his presidential life as this must feel like losing an appendage. The company is also limiting the official and accounts during his remaining time in office. Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s campaign account, saying in a statement that “using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules.” Facebook and Instagram temporarily suspended his accounts on those platforms until after he leaves office. Twitter has been the lifeblood of his communications strategy as President – and as President, the company has allowed Trump’s account to continue when any other might have long ago been turned off. While Trump has complained about bias against conservatives in social media companies, Twitter has been the spigot from which he has spewed lies, fired Cabinet secretaries and aides, bullied opponents and stirred up his supporters. It’ll be much harder for the attention-craving President to shove his way into public life if he can’t so easily broadcast his thoughts. The company shut down the open window into the President’s thoughts and cut off his favorite form of communication. He may yet be impeached for a second time, an historical stain on an already tainted legacy, but the loss of his Twitter handle may be one of the most immediately consequential prices he’ll pay for his actions during these final two weeks of his presidency. ![]() ![]() It took a single moment Friday to lose them forever. It took President Donald Trump years and tens of thousands of tweets to build up 88.7 million followers on Twitter. ![]()
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