MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Suspend Trump's Twitter account until all ballots are counted, Dems urge tech giant: 'This is not Russia'

Trump sounded the alarm on potential voter fraud as his Democratic challenger Joe Biden enjoyed a surging lead among mail-in ballots

Democrat leaders are demanding that Twitter suspend President Donald Trump's account until all ballots are counted in the 2020 presidential election in a stunning push that arguably emboldens big tech censorship.

Trump sounded the alarm on potential voter fraud as his Democratic challenger Joe Biden enjoyed a surging lead among mail-in ballots. He then claimed victory for himself in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina before media outlets could call the states. This did not sit well with several Democrats, one of them being Virginia Rep Gerry Connolly, who alleged that Trump has been spreading "pure disinformation" on the social media platform. “Suspend his account, @Twitter," Connolly wrote. "Valid votes are being counted. This is America, not Russia.” Meanwhile, Rhode Island's Rep David Cicilline described Trump's November 4 tweets as "a threat to our democracy.” 

Several Democrat officials, including Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen Kamala Harris, previously called on Twitter to block the POTUS from the platform, per Politico. That said, the San Francisco-based tech giant itself has removed or flagged several tweets from the president in the past, but has never gone so far as to suspend his account. Nonetheless, Twitter did make its policies on the spread of misinformation more stringent in the run-up to Election Day, and has been often accused of censoring conservative viewpoints.

"When people attempt to retweet a tweet with a misleading information label, [they would] see a prompt pointing them to credible information before [being] able to amplify it further," the tech giant wrote in a Monday tweet. "If we see content inciting interference with the election, encouraging violent action or other physical harms, we may take additional measures, such as adding a warning or requiring the removal of Tweets," it added.

The company also said in a blog post the same day that it would label or remove tweets that falsely claimed victory for any candidate, as well as add warnings on "misleading" tweets from "U.S. political figures or U.S.-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers." Twitter has since labeled posts that claimed Trump had won in Pennsylvania from his son Eric Trump and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

"Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted," the label read. "Twitter has a critical role to play in protecting the integrity of the election conversation, and we encourage candidates, campaigns, news outlets, and voters to use Twitter respectfully and to recognize our collective responsibility to the electorate to guarantee a safe, fair and legitimate democratic process this November," the company wrote.

The social media giant did not hesitate to label or hide six of the President's 14 tweets and retweets on November 4, one of which claimed Democrats were rigging the election to place Biden in the White House. “Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat-run & controlled," wrote Trump. "Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the ‘pollsters’ got it completely & historically wrong!”

"How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?" he wrote in another tweet. "They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!" he added.