NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Twitter on Friday permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s personal account, citing potential violence as the reasoning behind the decision.
In a statement, Twitter said it had closely reviewed recent tweets from the president’s account and has decided to permanently suspend the president from the platform.
“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 wrote.
Twitter officials say the platform allows the public to hear directly from elected officials, but stressed that those accounts are not above the service’s rules.
“Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open,” Twitter wrote. “However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.”
On Wednesday, the social media platform locked President Trump’s account after he posted a short video calling his violent supporters “very special” while repeating false claims about the integrity of the 2020 election.
At the time, Twitter said the tweets violated the newly created “civic integrity policy.”
The move by Twitter came one day after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that President Trump’s account would be locked until after the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Zuckerberg made the announcement on his personal account Thursday morning saying, “the shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”
Both Twitter and Facebook had initially locked the president’s account temporarily, after removing a number of posts that contained inflammatory remarks that many believed could lead to increased violence in the U.S. Capitol.
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