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Tuesday June 23 Twitter put another warning label on a tweet from US President Donald Trump in which he warned if protesters tried to set up an “autonomous zone” in Washington DC they would be “met with serious force!”
“There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!” the president said in his tweet, which Twitter said violated its policy against abusive behavior.
Trump posted the message after anti-racism protesters on Monday evening declared a “Black House Autonomous Zone” in Lafayette Square Park near the White House, where park police stopped demonstrators from pulling down a statue of former president Andrew Jackson.
Police cleared the White House area on Tuesday and blocked access to the site, where law enforcement had used violence to disperse protesters earlier this month.
“We’ve placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group,” Twitter said.
Twitter users, including Trump’s supporters, will be unable to retweet the offending tweet due to the measure.
The company explained that although the tweet broke its rules it “will remain on the service given its relevance to leaving them online to allow for scrutiny.”
Trump posted the same message on Facebook. CNN has reached out to Facebook for comment.
“There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your President. If they try they will be met with serious force!,” Trump posted on Twitter and Facebook.
Trump has been critical of the “autonomous zone” in Seattle, an area occupied by protestors for much of this month.
Criticizing Twitter’s decision Tuesday, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted that “citizens have a right to hear directly from their President and decide for themselves what to think about it.”
Twitter announced specific rules for politicians last year that allows them to sometimes violate the platform’s rules without their tweets being removed. The company says there is a “public interest” in people being able to see and debate statements from elected officials.
This is the fourth time Twitter has taken action against Trump’s account in just a few weeks.
Addressing the tweet, Twitter’s safety team wrote in a statement: “We’ve placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our policy against abusive behavior, specifically, the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group.”
The tweet is remaining on the platform “given its relevance to ongoing public conversation.” Users will be able to retweet it with comment, but they will not be able to “like,” and “reply it.
Twitter first placed a label on Trump’s tweets on May 26, when it determined that two of his posts about mail-in voting required fact-checking links, which prompted the US president to accuse the social media platform of meddling in election.
Last week, the social media platform later labelled a “racist baby” video the president posted to mock CNN as “manipulated media”.
