Twitter added a warning Friday to one of President Donald Trump's tweets for the first time and said he violated the platform's rules by glorifying violence when he suggested looters in Minneapolis could be shot.
The White House said the president "did not glorify violence. He clearly condemned it."
Trump has been railing against the social media company since earlier in the week, when it for the first time applied fact checks to two of his tweets. Those were about mail-in ballots.
Debate is heating up about when and how much social media companies should police the content on their platforms as coronavirus misinformation swirls and the 2020 presidential election looms.
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The Trump tweet that was flagged Friday came amid days of violent protests over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white police officer kept a knee on his neck for several minutes.
"These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen," Trump tweeted about the protesters who were rioting and looting. "Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!"
Trump said Friday afternoon, after many hours of backlash, that he had meant that "Looting leads to shooting."
"I don't want this to happen, and that's what the expression put out last night means," he tweeted. "It was spoken as a fact, not as a statement. It's very simple, nobody should have any problem with this other than the haters, and those looking to cause trouble on social media. Honor the memory of George Floyd!"
The looting and shooting statement hearkens back to Miami Police Chief Walter Headley during a December 1967 news conference addressing efforts by authorities to carry out what United Press International described at the time as a "crackdown on ... slum hoodlums."
According to UPI, "Headley said Miami hasn't been troubled with racial disturbances and looting because he let the word filter down, 'When the looting starts, the shooting starts.'"
Twitter did not remove the tweet, saying it had determined it might be in the public interest to keep it accessible. But the tweet was hidden so that a user looking at Trump's timeline would have to click on the warning to see the original tweet. Hiding it also effectively demotes the tweet by limiting how users can retweet it and ensuring that Twitter algorithms don't recommend it.
Twitter said Friday that it posted the warning label on Trump's tweet "based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today," but left it up "given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance."
A tweet using the same language as Trump's was later posted on the official White House Twitter account, and Twitter eventually put a warning on that too. It was also posted on Facebook, which hasn't taken any visible action on it.
Twitter taking a harder line than Facebook on Trump's posts probably has something to do with Twitter's decision last year to stop taking political ads, said Melissa Ryan, CEO of the consultancy group Card Strategies, which researches online disinformation and right-wing extremism.
She said the coronavirus pandemic has also led Twitter to inch toward stronger enforcement of its policies at the same time that Trump's tweets have "amped up in terms of crazy and intensity and disinformation."
"Twitter and Trump have been playing a game of chicken," Ryan said. "It feels like they've both been moving toward this for a while."
TRUMP FIRES SALVO
Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing executive branch agencies to ask independent rule-making agencies including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to study whether they can place new regulations on the social media companies, though experts express doubts that much can be done without an act of Congress.
The president and fellow conservatives have claimed for years that Silicon Valley tech companies are biased against them. While the executives and many employees of Twitter, Facebook and Google may lean liberal, the companies have stressed they have no business interest in favoring one political party over the other.
"Twitter is doing nothing about all of the lies & propaganda being put out by China or the Radical Left Democrat Party," Trump said in a later tweet. "They have targeted Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States. Section 230 should be revoked by Congress. Until then, it will be regulated!"
Twitter first outlined in early 2018 that it wouldn't block world leaders from the platform or remove their controversial tweets. But it announced nearly a year ago that it could apply warning labels and obscure the tweets of leaders if they used their accounts to threaten or abuse others. That followed complaints from Trump critics that the president had gotten a free pass from Twitter to post hateful messages and attack his enemies in ways they said could lead to violence.
Twitter further clarified its rules in October, saying it will enforce its policies against any user who makes clear and direct threats of violence against a person, but carving out an exception for government officials' "foreign policy saber-rattling on economic or military issues."
TWITTER ASSERTS ITSELF
The earlier Trump tweets that Twitter flagged were not hidden but did come with an option to "get the facts about mail-in ballots," a link that led to fact checks and news stories by media organizations. Those tweets called mail-in ballots "fraudulent" and predicted that "mail boxes will be robbed," among other things.
Twitter's decision to flag Trump's tweets came as the president continued to use the platform to push a conspiracy theory accusing MSNBC host and former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough of killing a staffer in his Florida congressional office in 2001. Medical officials determined the staffer had an undiagnosed heart condition, passed out and hit her head as she fell.
Scarborough, who was in Washington, not Florida, at the time, has urged the president to stop his attacks. The staffer's husband also recently demanded that Twitter remove the tweets. The company issued a statement expressing its regret to the husband but so far has taken no other action.
Twitter's decision is likely to be seized upon outside the U.S. to scrutinize the social media behavior of other world leaders. Israel has been waging its own pressure campaign on the company over it allowing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to have an account.
In a letter dated Sunday, an Israeli official wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey complaining about Khamenei tweets that repeated comments he made in a recent speech in support of Palestinians that called Israel a "cancerous growth" that will be "uprooted and destroyed."
On the other hand, the company has removed tweets related to the coronavirus from the leaders of Brazil and Venezuela, and says it will remove content that has a call to action that poses a threat to people's health or well-being.
It has also previously used the warning label for an elected official, Brazilian politician Osmar Terra, who tweeted that quarantine increases the spread of the virus.
TRUMP GETS PUSH-BACK
Trump's late-night Thursday tweet about Minneapolis, which was paired with a post about Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, came after protesters in the city broke into a police precinct that had been evacuated and set fire to the building.
On Thursday, amid reports of fires, looting and vandalism that had begun the night before, Frey declared an emergency, which was soon followed by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz's order to call in the National Guard. By nightfall, more than 500 soldiers had been deployed to Minneapolis, St. Paul and surrounding communities, the Guard confirmed.
But protesters continued wreaking havoc in the city Thursday night -- much to Trump's dismay.
"I can't stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis," Trump tweeted early Friday, before taking aim at Frey.
"A total lack of leadership," the president continued. "Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right."
Frey hit back at the president during a news briefing early Friday.
"Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis. We are strong as h * * * ," Frey said. "Is this a difficult time period? Yes. But you better be d * * * sure we're going to get through this."
"It's not helpful," said Walz during a news briefing Friday concerning Trump's looting and shooting tweet. "Anything we do to add fuel to that fire is really, really challenging."
Trump's presumptive Democratic presidential rival, Joe Biden, said it was "no time for incendiary tweets, no time to incite violence."
Even the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia group, urged Trump to retract his statement, citing concerns that the tweet could be seen as encouraging the National Guard to "shoot people for stealing."
"This is a disaster," the group tweeted from its official account. "President Trump needs to retract that statement ASAP, stating that he misspoke & did not mean to say that National Guard should shoot people for stealing."
Information for this article was contributed by Barbara Ortutay, Matt O'Brien, Tali Arbel, Jon Gambrell, Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller of The Associated Press; and by Tony Romm, Allyson Chiu and Timothy Bella of The Washington Post.
A Section on 05/30/2020