A new batch of the “Twitter Files” released by independent journalist Bari Weiss reveals Twitter employees acknowledged on internal channels that former President Donald Trump’s tweets shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot did not violate Twitter policies, but the Big Tech company cooked up a reason to ban him anyway with the corporate press running cover.
Weiss revealed in a Twitter thread on Monday that Twitter employees pushed for the removal of Trump long before they created a reason to ban him from their platform on Jan. 8, 2021. So did the media — after Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, propaganda press outlets began dredging up polls and other content designed to cast doubt on Trump’s presence on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
When media figures weren’t personally calling for the suppression of Trump online, outlets such as Politico amplified Democrats who wanted nothing more than to see their top enemy banned from social media for life.
One of the most egregious and effective examples of this was when The Washington Post chose to publish a letter from hundreds of Twitter employees early in the afternoon on Jan. 8. In the letter, Twitter staff demanded then-CEO Jack Dorsey, legal and policy executive Vijaya Gadde, and other executives “permanently suspend” Trump. They also called on the Big Tech company to review the role it played as “Trump’s megaphone” and helping “fuel the deadly events of January 6th.”
“We appreciate stronger measures, like the interstitials recently used on his account and his Jan. 6 timeout. We do not believe these actions are sufficient,” the “Tweeps” wrote.
At the time of the letter’s amplification in the digital pages of WaPo, however, Twitter staff doubted that Trump’s tweets on Jan. 8 would justify his permanent removal from the platform.
Even after Twitter’s safety team concluded that Trump’s tweets did not violate any policies, Twitter banned the sitting president by the evening of Jan. 8.
Instead of heeding the assessment that Trump’s tweets did not violate Twitter’s policies, the Big Tech company took a page out of its Hunter Biden laptop censorship playbook and used a vague excuse to nuke the president’s personal page.
At the time, Twitter claimed that giving Trump access to the online public square posed a “risk of further incitement of violence.”
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter’s official statement read.
Censors at Twitter, who pined for Trump’s suspension for months, celebrated the suspension in various internal chat rooms. Corrupt corporate media outlets returned the favor by publicly glorifying the decision.
These employees were so emboldened by their sweeping act of speech suppression that they began to brainstorm what other types of content and users they could get away with deplatforming.
To this day, corrupt corporate media continue to advocate for the downfall of anyone who threatens their allies in Big Tech. That includes publishing hit pieces about new Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who initiated the release of the “Twitter Files” with the hopes of exposing Big Tech collusion and censorship tactics.