The campaign account for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was suspended from Twitter after sharing a video of protesters allegedly making violent threats against the Senator, including a protester saying “just stab the motherfucker in the heart.” Twitter had no problem with “Massacre Mitch” trending on the platform.
Sen. McConnell’s team slammed Twitter in a comment to USA Today’s Courier-Journal.
“This morning, Twitter locked our account for posting the video of real-world, violent threats made against Mitch McConnell. This is a problem with the speech police in America today,” said campaign manager Kevin Golden.
“Twitter will allow the words of ‘Massacre Mitch’ to trend nationally on their platform, but locks our account for posting actual threats against us,” Golden added. “We appealed and Twitter stood by their decision, saying our account will remain locked until we delete the video.”
Daily Wire reporter Ryan Saavedra was also locked out of his Twitter account for drawing attention to the threats.
“Twitter asked me yesterday to delete this tweet,” said Saavedra. “It showed a person allegedly calling for violence against Mitch McConnell. The person appears to be a BLM activist who has met with Elizabeth Warren.”
“I said no and they suspended me *and* McConnell’s re-election campaign.”
Twitter asked me yesterday to delete this tweet:
It showed a person allegedly calling for violence against Mitch McConnell
The person appears to be a BLM activist who has met with Elizabeth Warren
I said no and they suspended me *and* McConnell's re-election campaign
THREAD: pic.twitter.com/RSospX3212
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 7, 2019
A Twitter spokeswoman told Breitbart News that the platform does not allow the sharing of violent threats on the platform regardless of context. This means that even if the person sharing the material intended to criticize the threats, they can still be banned, suspended, or locked out of their account as a result.
On Saavedra’s ban, the spokeswoman said: “The user was temporarily locked out of their account for a Tweet that violated our violent threats policy, specifically threats involving physical safety.”
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Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
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