- Twitter has locked President Donald Trump’s account for 12 hours after he repeatedly broke the service’s rules on Wednesday during the attempted coup that he incited.
- Twitter says that Trump’s account will remain locked until the offending tweets have been deleted, and says that if he breaks the rules again, his account will be permanently suspended.
- Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States on January 20th.
Following an insurrection on Capitol Hill incited by the President of the United States on Wednesday, Twitter has said that it will ban Donald Trump’s account if he violates the service’s rules again. In the meantime, his account has been locked for 12 hours for his tweets condoning the actions of the violent mob, which included vandalization of federal buildings and resulted in multiple injuries as well as at least one shooting death.
“We’ll continue to evaluate the situation in real time, including examining activity on the ground and statements made off Twitter,” the Twitter Safety account explained in a follow-up message. “We will keep the public informed, including if further escalation in our enforcement approach is necessary.”
Shortly after the protests in Washington began to escalate on Wednesday afternoon, Trump sent out a tweet telling his supporters to remain peaceful, but stopped short of telling them to leave. He then shared a video that was mostly focused on false allegations of voter fraud and his stolen election, in which he also asked the rioters to go home while telling him that he loved them and that they were very special. YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook all removed the video. Two other tweets ended up being removed as well, at which point Twitter took action:
Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 7, 2021
Trump’s presidency will end on January 20th when Joe Biden is sworn into office. In the meantime, if Trump does not delete any of the rule-breaking tweets, it sounds like he won’t have access to his personal account.
