US President Donald Trump has been permanently suspended from social network app Twitter due to the risk of further incitement of violence. In a statement, Twitter said the decision was made after close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account. The social media platform also deleted new tweets posted by Trump on the official government account @POTUS.
Trump tweeted, “Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me.”
In a series of tweets from the official @POTUS account, Trump said, “Twitter may be a private company, but without the government’s gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long. I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”
“We will not be SILENCED!” Trump tweeted from the @POTUS government account, with 33.4 million followers, after Trump’s @realDonaldTrump personal account was permanently banned by Twitter.
“Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH,” the US President wrote in the now-deleted tweets.
On Wednesday, Twitter temporarily blocked Trump’s account, which had more than 88 million followers, following the siege of US Capitol Hill.
Twitter said, “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 behaviour from this account in recent weeks.”
Hundreds of hooligans in the name of Trump supporters entered the US Capitol and resorted to vandalism as the US Congress attempted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. The violence led to the death of four civilians and a police officer. Twitter had warned then that it would ban Mr Trump permanently if he breached the platform’s rules again.
President-elect Joe Biden said impeachment was for Congress to decide. The White House dismissed the impeachment as a politically motivated move that would only serve to further divide the country.
