Twitter Restricts Ohio Senate Candidate Josh Mandel’s Account Over ‘Hateful Conduct’

Twitter temporarily restricted the account of Josh Mandel, the former treasurer of Ohio, state representative, and a primary candidate to succeed Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) as a U.S. Senator. Twitter said the restriction was due to a violation of its “hateful conduct” policy.

According to the Cincinnati Inquirer, Mandel was prevented from tweeting, retweeting, liking tweets, or following new accounts for a period of 12 hours over a tweet criticizing President Biden’s immigration policies.

In the tweet, Mandel asked his followers which type of illegal immigrants currently flooding across the border due to the Biden administration’s border crisis will commit more crimes, “Mexican gangbangers” or “Muslim terrorists.”

Twitter informed the Republican candidate that he had violated the platform’s hateful conduct policy, which prohibits posts that “promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

In a statement, Mandel condemned Twitter for silencing his account.

“Conservatives everywhere should be frightened by the ongoing censorship by Twitter, Facebook, Google and the liberal media,” said the Republican primary candidate in a statement. “Big tech should never have the power to decide what speech is allowed in America and I won’t ever shy away from holding politicians accountable for their terrible policies.”

Following his suspension, Mandel returned to Twitter, posting a video of a journalist challenging him on his statements.

“I just say it how it is,” said Mandel in the interview.

On Twitter’s action against his account, Mandel said “I wear this as a badge of honor as Big Tech thugs & elites target those who they are most afraid of. Our movement of steel-spined Constitutional Conservatives & Trump Warriors will not be silenced.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.