Twitter Permanently Bans Trump’s Personal Account

Ouch! Trump’s most preferred social media megaphone has been taken off from his hands, marking the most high-profile punishment the company has ever imposed and the end of Trump’s relationship with his favorite social media megaphone. Twitter Inc. permanently banned President Trump’s personal account (@realDonaldTrump), citing the risk of further incitement of violence and closing off one of his main communication tools following the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his followers.

Currently House Democrats are drafting new articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump following a deadly riot at the Capitol Wednesday in a failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden‘s presidential victory. Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi also said she had spoken with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about “preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes.”

Twitter’s move late Friday capped two days of sharply escalating action by social-media companies in the wake of the riot that left five people dead in Washington, D.C., and fueled pressure on the platforms to do more to prevent additional violence. Late Friday Google suspended from its app store the social-media app Parler, which some Trump supporters and other conservatives had flocked to over the past year, saying the service had violated its policies. Apple Inc. threatened to do the same.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter said in a statement Friday.

Twitter also had initially suspended Mr. Trump from posting on a temporary basis puttting up a 12-hour ban on Trump’s account for “repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy” after he posted messages repeating lies that the election was stolen. Wednesday night Twitter commented saying his tweets had violated its policies and that further breaches could result in a permanent ban. The social-media company allowed him to resume posting on Thursday, and many critics of the president called on it to take more lasting action.

At the time, Twitter said Trump would be banned permanently if he continued to violate its rules, including those around civic integrity or violent threats. Twitter said in a statement Friday that two new tweets posted since Trump’s initial suspension violated the platform’s rules, prompting the permanent suspension.

“Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks,” Twitter said in its Friday blog.

Twitter decided the new tweets were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts” at the Capitol, and shared its reasoning in five parts:

President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets (1, 2) by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, that there would be an “orderly transition” on January 20th.

The second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending.

The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.

The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.

Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.

Twitter declined to comment on other Trump-related accounts like @POTUS when questioned. If Trump attempted to circumvent this ban by using a separate account, that account would be permanently suspended “at first detection,” according to Twitter. If a government account, like @POTUS, was used to evade @realDonaldTrump’s ban, Twitter said that it would try to limit the account’s use but would not suspend it unless it was necessary to curb real-world violence.

Earlier Friday, more than 300 Twitter employees signed onto an internal petition calling for Trump to be permanently banned following the January 6th Capitol riots.

“We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection. Those acts jeopardize the wellbeing of the United States, our company, and our employees,” the employees wrote in the letter.

On Thursday, Facebook put an “indefinite” ban on Trump that it said would last at least through Inauguration Day. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the risks “are simply too great” to allow Trump continued access after he used the platform to “incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”

The suspension has been a long time coming. For years, Twitter has faced pressure to remove Trump from its platform due to the large megaphone it’s offered him to spread hateful language and lies. The company justified his continued presence on the platform as being in the public interest.