It was one of Donald Trumps favorite megaphones. After calls to suspend the account, Twitter finally suspended Trump permanently.
Will we ever see the day that Twitter bans Donald Trump permanently? This question has been an off and on thing since Trump became president. Trump famously used his Twitter account to spew conspiracy theories and lies on a constant basis. Twitter, for it’s part, did everything it could to justify why the rules should be relaxed for the outgoing president.
The signs that Trump’s time was limited really started to ramp up after Twitter said back in November that Trumps special status is coming to an end. This essentially means that the full set of rules will eventually not apply to him. Still, ever since Trump lost the Federal election, Trump has been racking up warning labels at an unbelievable rate.
Based on those comments, though, it seemed likely that Trump may lose his Twitter account shortly after the 20th. We are now learning that Twitter could no longer wait until Biden’s inauguration. From NBC:
Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account on Friday, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.”
The president’s account, with 88 million followers, was initially banned for 12 hours on Jan. 6 due to “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,” after he used the platform to tweet condemnation against Vice President Mike Pence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.
“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 a tweet.
The company banned the president’s account after years of public pressure and several attempts to limit the reach of his account in recent days. Hundreds of Twitter employees signed a letter urging Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to ban the president for using the platform to incite violence in the wake of the Capitol siege.
The move comes after Shopify suspended Trumps account. In addition to that, Facebook permanently banned Trump from their platform. This occurred after Trump incited his supporters to besiege the Capitol and occupy the chambers and offices while lawmakers were evacuated. The FBI has since asked people to step forward and send evidence so they could use that evidence in their investigations.
With Trump losing access to Facebook and Twitter, his reach has become exceedingly limited.
The news also comes as fallout from the terrorist attack continues to build. Democrats have drafted articles of impeachment and intend on moving forward with the impeachment process on Monday. This in spite of vice-president, Mike Pence, refusing to impeach the president for his role in the attack on America’s democracy. From ABC:
House Democrats on Friday discussed moving forward with efforts to impeach President Donald Trump a second time, circulating the draft of a single article citing “incitement of insurrection” that they could introduce as early as Monday and hold a full House vote on as early as the middle of next week.
The article charges Trump with “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States” with his comments at the rally outside the White House that it says “encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—imminent lawless action at the Capitol.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a lengthy conference call with her caucus Friday on how to proceed with just 12 days to go before Trump will leave office.
“The president chose to be an insurrectionist,” Pelosi told members at the start, according to a source on the call.
Earlier, she sent a letter saying Democrats should pursue impeachment unless Trump resigned “immediately.”
It should be noted that the timeline to impeach the president with just 12 days to do is going to be tight. Processes like this usually take a lot of time – and time is not on Democrats side in this regard. Still, some Republican’s are warming to the idea of impeaching the president. This, of course, helps the cause.
Still, all this points to Trump becoming increasingly isolated. Social media is now turning their backs on the president and some of the people on the Republican side of the aisle are also leaving Trumps side. One thing is for certain, things are escalating.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
