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Trump removal – by fiat

Twitter went from changing rules as it went, to removing Donald Trump by executive fiat – in violation of long-established custom.

Published

1 year ago

December 13, 2022

Terry A. Hurlbut

Yesterday afternoon, beginning at 10:06 a.m. PST, reporter Bari Weiss released the last thread describing the removal of Donald Trump. By every indication, the Twitter Trust and Safety Team acted by fiat, not by any rule then in effect. Worse, on that last day, we saw a mass formation psychotic episode, coupled with power intoxication, among Twitter staff. World leaders everywhere reacted in shock and surprise. But only until November of this year did anyone correct this slight.

The final Trump removal thread

Before we begin, here are the two tweets on the Donald Trump account that appeared on January 8, 2021:

The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2021

To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2021

As CNAV said on the Monday before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump has not used the account since then. But more to the point, nothing in the Trump account can possibly so construe as to incite violence. Bear this in mind as Bari Weiss’ thread begins. As ever, CNAV lists every other tweet, because each is a reply to one before it:

1. On the morning of January 8, President Donald Trump, with one remaining strike before being at risk of permanent suspension from Twitter, tweets twice.— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

3. 7:44 am: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” pic.twitter.com/bRF7O4Ijcf— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

5. “Our mission is to provide a forum that enables people to be informed and to engage their leaders directly,” the company wrote in 2019. Twitter’s aim was to “protect the public’s right to hear from their leaders and to hold them to account.”https://t.co/rtQjkQQxSs— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

7. There were dissenters inside Twitter.

“Maybe because I am from China,” said one employee on January 7, “I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.” pic.twitter.com/LtonK0gfS3— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

9. After January 6, Twitter employees organized to demand their employer ban Trump. “There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,” said one Twitter employee. pic.twitter.com/x9Xty6ndYP— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

11. In the early afternoon of January 8, The Washington Post published an open letter signed by over 300 Twitter employees to CEO Jack Dorsey demanding Trump’s ban. “We must examine Twitter’s complicity in what President-Elect Biden has rightly termed insurrection.”— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

13. “It's pretty clear he's saying the ‘American Patriots’ are the ones who voted for him and not the terrorists (we can call them that, right?) from Wednesday.”— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

15. “I also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” wrote Anika Navaroli, a Twitter policy official. “I’ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no vios”—or violations—“for the DJT one.” pic.twitter.com/DnJk2UUuf6— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

17. (Later, Navaroli would testify to the House Jan. 6 committee:“For months I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if nothing—if we made no intervention into what I saw occuring, people were going to die.”)— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

19. To understand Twitter’s decision to ban Trump, we must consider how Twitter deals with other heads of state and political leaders, including in Iran, Nigeria, and Ethiopia.— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

21. In October 2020, the former Malaysian Prime Minister said it was “a right” for Muslims to “kill millions of French people.”

Twitter deleted his tweet for “glorifying violence,” but he remains on the platform. The tweet below was taken from the Wayback Machine: pic.twitter.com/7tgxgCw9I9— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

23. In October 2021, Twitter allowed Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to call on citizens to take up arms against the Tigray region.

Twitter allowed the tweet to remain up, and did not ban the prime minister. pic.twitter.com/DThmGsJM1r— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

25. But Twitter executives did ban Trump, even though key staffers said that Trump had not incited violence—not even in a “coded” way.— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

27. A few minutes later, Twitter employees on the “scaled enforcement team” suggest that Trump’s tweet may have violated Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy—if you interpreted the phrase “American Patriots” to refer to the rioters. pic.twitter.com/Wszq4zBqnW— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

29. Two hours later, Twitter executives host a 30-minute all-staff meeting.

Jack Dorsey and Vijaya Gadde answer staff questions as to why Trump wasn’t banned yet.

But they make some employees angrier.— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

31. Dorsey requested simpler language to explain Trump’s suspension.

Roth wrote, “god help us [this] makes me think he wants to share it publicly” pic.twitter.com/KTMumR0rDD— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

33. Many at Twitter were ecstatic. pic.twitter.com/wgxuwQBLkU— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

35. By the next day, employees expressed eagerness to tackle “medical misinformation” as soon as possible: pic.twitter.com/kJKqZaSekt— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

37. But Twitter’s COO Parag Agrawal—who would later succeed Dorsey as CEO—told Head of Security Mudge Zatko: “I think a few of us should brainstorm the ripple effects” of Trump's ban. Agrawal added: “centralized content moderation IMO has reached a breaking point now.” pic.twitter.com/8f5bSXRKk5— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

39. Macron told an audience he didn’t “want to live in a democracy where the key decisions” were made by private players. “I want it to be decided by a law voted by your representative, or by regulation, governance, democratically discussed and approved by democratic leaders.”— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

41. Whether you agree with Navalny and Macron or the executives at Twitter, we hope this latest installment of #TheTwitterFiles gave you insight into that unprecedented decision.— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

43. Ultimately, the concerns about Twitter’s efforts to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, blacklist disfavored views, and ban a president aren’t about the past choices of executives in a social media company.— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

45. This was reported by @ShellenbergerMD, @IsaacGrafstein, @SnoozyWeiss, @Olivia_Reingold, @petersavodnik, @NellieBowles. Follow all of our work at The Free Press: @TheFP— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 12, 2022

Analysis

As CNAV observed above, this is a textbook example of mass formation psychosis. Which is what you get when a single person, or event, strikes such terror in so many hearts that a mass of people act without thinking. Doctor Robert Malone has alleged that this phenomenon persuaded people to accept COVID lockdowns – except in the State of South Dakota, whose Governor disclaimed any authority to do any such thing, or the Republic of Sweden, whose leaders simply decided not to exercise any such authority.

In the Twitter case, we see people already suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, multiplying that many-fold in response to what they convinced themselves was the near-overthrow of the government. The “ecstasy” that Bari Weiss documents in her various screencaps is more than any sense of relief. Those messages do not say “We dodged a bullet.” They say, “DING, DONG, THE WARLOCK’S DEAD!” (Meaning Trump, not Rafael Warnock, Senator from Georgia.) Furthermore, this experience emboldened them to make themselves arbiters of truth. They boast of this specifically in reference to SARS-CoV-2. This is the power intoxication component.

And though Twitter staff threw all their civic lessons to the winds, many outside the country did not. The French, German, Mexican, and Russian voices speak volumes. Since when do non-Americans care more about freedom of speech than Americans? Since January 8, 2021, that’s when.

Reaction

Reaction has so far been mostly positive. One user quoted his earlier sharing of a video making clear that present staff “err on the side of freedom of speech.”

Great job. Have you seen this?https://t.co/cDg19UR18f— The People's MMA 🦈 (@ThePeoplesMMA) December 12, 2022

The Daily Mail has the best reportage outside of Twitter. Their headline, which speaks of activist staff, says it all.

On Twitter itself, Charlie Kirk shared, at 4:58 p.m. PST, an email dissolving the Twitter Trust and Safety Council.

Twitters full email to “Trust and Safety” Council Members pic.twitter.com/7G0mJCLU7t— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 13, 2022

This came after three members of that Council resigned in bitter protest last week.

Three of us resigned from Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council today: @eirliani @podesta_lesley and me. Here’s why https://t.co/h05TblfGIO pic.twitter.com/iqcHvhbgms— annecollier (@annecollier) December 8, 2022

But it also comes on the very day of the release of the fifth installment of the Twitter Files. The Post Millennial reported the full particulars of the dissolution and the protest resignations.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it’s enemy action.

Ian Fleming

In any case, the removal of Trump was only the first such instance. After that, Twitter removed several conservative accounts – in a manner one can only describe as arbitrary and capricious.

Today the Medical Misinformation Policy is no longer in force, and banned accounts continue to come back. But the next question is whether President Trump has a cause of legal action, for breach of contract. Thus far he has announced no such action. Only time will tell.

Terry A. Hurlbut

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.