Of course they should just honor their terms of service and kick him off the platform… but they won’t.
For the first time, Twitter called tweets from Donald Trump “potentially misleading” — a decision that prompted the president to accuse the social media platform of election meddling.
On Tuesday, Twitter highlighted two of Trump’s tweets that falsely claimed mail-in ballots would lead to widespread voter fraud, appending a message the company has introduced to combat misinformation and disputed or unverified claims.
“Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” read the message beneath each tweet. It linked to a curated fact-check page the platform had created filled with further links and summaries of news articles debunking the assertion.
Twitter said the move was aimed at providing “context” around Trump’s remarks. But Twitter’s unprecedented decision is likely to raise further questions about its willingness to consistently apply the label to other Trump tweets that have been deemed misleading by third parties, particularly as the president has lobbed baseless allegations against former Rep. Joe Scarborough regarding the death of a congressional staffer years ago.
Trump’s allegations draw on a discredited conspiracy theory claiming, without evidence, that Scarborough played a role in the 2001 death of then-staffer Lori Klausutis. The reckless claims are undermined by the official autopsy, which found Klausutis had an undiagnosed heart condition. That history was painfully recounted in a letter written last week by Klausutis’s husband, Timothy, to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. In the letter, which became public on Tuesday, Timothy Klausutis pleaded with Dorsey to remove Trump’s tweets.
“I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the President of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” Klausutis wrote.
Trump, of course, immediately played the victim card:
.@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post……..Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!