Twitter swiftly suspended an account this week that attempted to resurrect Donald Trump’s profile where the former president has been banned since the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The account @DJTDesk, which was launched Wednesday by the former president’s political team, was taken down by the company later the same day.
“As stated in our ban evasion policy, we’ll take enforcement action on accounts whose apparent intent is to replace or promote content affiliated with a suspended account,” a spokesperson for Twitter said in a statement.
Trump has been permanently banned on all social media since the day after the uprising, with platforms citing the potential for Trump to incite further violence. It was the most aggressive action that Facebook and Twitter had ever taken against Trump, who more than a decade ago embraced the immediacy and scale of Twitter to rally loyalists, castigate enemies and feed false conspiracy theories to his followers.
Trump has now been without his favorite method of communicating with his supporters for more than four months.
Wednesday’s quick action by Twitter came one day after an independent oversight board for Facebook extended the ban on the former president but called on the social media company to revisit the issue in six months, calling the “indefinite” ban on Trump unreasonable.
Trump’s apparent attempt to get around the ban on Twitter coincides with his new webpage called “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” — a blog started in late March that features a timeline format similar to Twitter and Facebook, where Trump is free to attack political enemies and continue to make unsubstantiated claims about election fraud.
On Wednesday, Trump called out social media companies for upholding the bans against him.
“What Facebook, Twitter, and Google have done is a total disgrace and an embarrassment to our Country,” Trump wrote in a post on Wednesday. “Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth, but the truth will come out anyway, bigger and stronger than ever before. The People of our Country will not stand for it! These corrupt social media companies must pay a political price, and must never again be allowed to destroy and decimate our Electoral Process.”
Every blog post contains buttons for users to share a link to Trump’s viewpoints on social media.
Republicans have continued to claim the ban on Trump amounts to illegal censorship and an infringement on free speech rights, despite terms and conditions by the platforms that prohibit misinformation and threats of violence.
“We’re all aware of Big Tech’s ever-increasing censorship of conservative voices and their commitment to serve the radical progressive agenda,” said Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio, during a five-hour virtual hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March, in which the CEOs of the Big Three social media companies faced questions about their role in inciting the deadly mob at the Capitol in January.
Notably, U.S. law respects a private company’s right to do business with whomever it chooses in spite of the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech, according to legal experts.
Frustration over the ban has been building recently inside Trump’s team due to the inability to post anything that features the 45th president speaking.
In late March, Facebook took down a video of Trump being interviewed by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and posted to her page, demonstrating that the ban would continue to be enforced even as the former president has no access to an account.
“This guidance applies to all campaign accounts and Pages, including Team Trump, other campaign messaging vehicles on our platforms, and former surrogates,” said the email, which was later shared on Instagram by Eric Trump.
In a preemptive move, Facebook sent an email to Trump officials warning that any content posted to Facebook and Instagram “in the voice of President Trump is not currently allowed on our platforms (including new posts with President Trump speaking),” adding that such content would “be removed if posted, resulting in additional limitations on accounts that posted it.”
“Hi folks,” a Facebook representative named Katelyn wrote in an email to Lara Trump with the subject line “Content Removal,” according to Fox News.
“We are reaching out to let you know that we removed content from Lara Trump’s Facebook Page that featured President Trump speaking,” the rep said. “In line with the block we placed on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, further content posted in the voice of Donald Trump will be removed and result in additional limitations on the accounts.”
Lara Trump posted the email from Facebook to her Instagram page.
“What they did to Lara was disgraceful,” a Trump source told Fox News. “They’re shutting down our voices, anything to do with Trump.”
“It’s not good what’s going on. They are trying to completely silence us,” the source continued, according to Fox News.
The source added: “It’s not going to work out all too well, though, because we’re firing away and starting up our own stuff right now.”
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