Twitter has suspended US President Donald Trump’s account for 12 hours and for the first time deleted his tweets after he praised the mob who stormed Congress and said he ‘loved’ them.
YouTube and Facebook also followed suit in removing the posts, with Facebook and Instagram also blocking Trump from their platform for 24 hours.
Reports confirmed that Snapchat blocked him on Wednesday morning, before he filmed the video. The platform said their locking of his account was indefinite.
One of the deleted tweets read: ‘These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!’
In the deleted video, he poured more fuel on the fire, claiming the election was ‘stolen’ and telling the rioters that he ‘loved’ them.
I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us,’ he said.
‘It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.’
Trump said it was ‘a very tough period of time,’ and emphasized his own personal loss.
‘There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country.
This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home.
‘We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home at peace.’
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The third deleted tweet, posted several hours before the others, attacked Mike Pence for failing to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win.
‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,’ he tweeted.
‘USA demands the truth!’
The video and tweets were removed on Wednesday night.
Twitter showed an image saying: ‘This tweet is no longer available’, and linked back to their page explaining their rational for blocking or putting warnings on tweets.
Twitter said they had removed the tweets for violating their ‘Civic Integrity policy’.
‘As a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C., we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump Tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,’ the social media company said.
This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.’
Facebook spokesman said: ‘We’ve assessed two policy violations against President Trump’s Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time.’
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said: ‘We are locking President Trump’s Instagram account for 24 hours as well.’
Andy Stone, another Facebook spokesman, earlier told CNN Business: ‘The violent protests in the Capitol today are a disgrace.’
He added: ‘We prohibit incitement and calls for violence on our platform. We are actively reviewing and removing any content that breaks these rules.’
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Farshad Shadloo, YouTube spokesperson, said in an email to Insider: ‘We removed a video posted this afternoon to Donald Trump’s channel that violated our policies regarding content that alleges widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S.
We do allow copies of this video if uploaded with additional context and sufficient educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic (EDSA) value.’
And Rachel Racusen told The Information that Trump’s Snapchat account was also locked.
‘We can confirm that earlier today we locked President Trump’s Snapchat account,’ she said in a statement.
He will not be able to share new content until Snap decides to lift the restriction, she said, noting that his account was locked on Wednesday before he posted the video about the ‘stolen’ election.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have previously labelled content posted by the president with warnings over the last year, in particular his claims about election fraud and COVID-19.
Throughout the 2020 presidential election, the platforms placed labels on dozens of Trump’s tweets that made false or misleading claims about voter fraud.
However, this appears to be the first time Twitter flagged a tweet as posing ‘a risk of violence.’
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