Twitter Permanently Bans President Trump

Courtesy image.

Twitter has permanently suspended the account of President Donald Trump as of Friday evening.

The social media platform, which has been the president’s preferred form of mass communication for years, released a statement explaining its decision.

“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,” the company said. “In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action.”

Trump’s permanent suspension from the site, where his account homepage is now little more than a blank slate, was the result of two tweets he sent out following his reinstatement to the platform after Twitter initially suspended his access for 12 hours earlier this week.

The first read, “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. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

The second can be paraphrased as the president noting his intention to skip the Jan. 20 inauguration of his replacement, President-Elect Joe Biden.

Twitter claimed that the two tweets violated its policy against the glorifying violence.

“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,” the company continued in its explanation.

Trump has also been banned indefinitely banned from Facebook for essentially the same reasons.

“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on the platform Thursday. “Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

With access to three of the largest social media platforms in the world outside his grasp, the president took to the @POTUS account in an attempt to circumnavigate his Twitter ban. Trump posted four tweets including the following:

“As I have been saying for a long time, 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,” Trump tweeted.

All four tweets were promptly removed from the site.

Constitutional experts say those who argue that Twitter and Facebook are violating Trump’s 1st Amendment Rights are incorrect.

“The First Amendment only protects against censorship by the government and government entities, not by private entities and organizations, such as social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook,” Marion Brechner, of the First Amendment Project at the University of Florida, told USA Today.