Twitter pinned a warning label to one of President Donald Trump’s threatening tweets about the protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota early Friday morning that declared “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Trump had posted two tweets railing against the protests that came about after a black man in Minneapolis named George Floyd died after a white cop, Derick Chauvin, pinned him down while kneeling on his neck, which have led to looting:
Tapping/clicking the label shows the following tweet:
In the first tweet, Trump wrote that he “can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City” and vowed to “send in the National Guard & get the job done right” if Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey did not “get his act together and bring the City under control.”
In the second tweet, Trump declared that he had called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and told him that “the Military is with him all the way.”
“Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote.
Twitter said in a statement that the tweet “violates our policies regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today.”
“We’ve taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts, but have kept the Tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance,” the company said.
Trump threw a fit on Friday morning in response to the warning label.
“Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party,” he tweeted. “They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States.”
Several hours later, the White House insisted via Twitter that Trump “did not glorify violence” and attacked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
“He clearly condemned it,” the White House tweeted. “@Jack and Twitter’s biased, bad-faith ‘fact-checkers’ have made it clear: Twitter is a publisher, not a platform.”
The White House also tweeted the text in Trump’s original tweet. Twitter then flagged and hid the White House’s tweet.
The social media platform was already under attack by Trump after it attached fact checking labels under his tweets on Tuesday in which he falsely claimed that mail-in voting leads to mass election fraud.
“Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” said the label. Tapping on it leads users to a page compiling articles from credible news outlets, such as the Washington Post, that refute Trump’s claims and report that there is no evidence of voter fraud.
Trump subsequently blew up at Twitter and accused the social media giant of “interfering” in the upcoming elections.
Invoking a head-spinning argument that asserted Twitter calling out his false claims was a violation of free speech and therefore he had the power as the head of the U.S. government to punish the private company, Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to remove Twitter’s protections from “civil liability.”
