Twitter issued a statement apologizing for tweets from President Donald Trump linking MSNBC host Joe Scarborough to the death of Lori Klausutis, a staffer who worked for Scarborough while he was a Republican congressman.
The apology comes after Scarborough’s wife and MSNBC co-host, Mika Brzezinski, went on a rant against the President last week, demanding that Twitter remove Trump’s tweets. It also followed a letter from Klausitis’ husband, who also demanded that Twitter remove the tweets.
Klausutis was found dead inside Scarborough’s Florida office in 2001, with a fatal head injury. The official autopsy stated that she had an undiagnosed heart condition, causing her to fall and fatally hit her head on an office desk.
Reached for comment by the Washington Examiner, an establishment conservative magazine, Twitter apologized for the President’s tweets this morning.
“We are deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family,” said a Twitter representative. “We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”
It is unclear how Twitter plans to “address” the President’s tweets. The platform’s current policy states that it will not interfere with statements made by world leaders, except in a limited number of cases such as when those leaders promote terrorism or post the private information of another user.
However, s pressure on Twitter to censor the President has mounted, the company appears to have stepped further and further away from this policy.
The platform has censored tweets from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro showing him talking to Brazilian citizens on the streets about the need to balance the need for economic growth with the need to contain the Chinese coronavirus.
In April, Twitter also targeted the President’s tweets, removing a meme posted by Trump over a copyright complaint, even though copyright complaints are not included on Twitter’s list of reasons for censoring world leaders.
Are you an insider at Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
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