According To Twitter Records, Michelle Obama And Others Lobbied For Trump To Enact His Order
According to the most recent “Twitter Files” episode, former President Donald Trump was banned the day after former First Lady Michelle Obama and other users requested that Twitter “permanently” remove him.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, and author Michael Shellenberger made public the fourth batch of Twitter records on Saturday. These records include conversations held privately between corporate executives between January 6 and January 8, 2021, including those that took place during and just after the ruckus at the Capitol Building.
Shellenberger stated in one of the documents that the company had been under “internal and external pressure,” including that from the former first lady, to prevent Trump from using Twitter.
The president stated in a lengthy tweet on January 7 that Silicon Valley businesses should “stop supporting this monstrous behavior—and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technologies from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection.”
And if we are to have any chance of rebuilding our nation, she continued, now is the time for swift and severe consequences for the leadership failure that led to yesterday’s shame.
The Anti-Defamation League was one of several well-known people and organisations who backed Trump’s ban in addition to the former first lady.
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) January 7, 2021
On January 7, the company’s workers received an email from Jack Dorsey, who was then the CEO, telling them to “be consistent in its rules, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a brief suspension,” as Shellenberger described it.
Trump was serving a suspension at the time and was on the platform.
The records further showed that Twitter had a policy known as “Public-interest exceptions,” which permitted elected officials to post on the social media website even when doing so looked to be against the rules since there was a sufficient public interest in what they had to say.
Shellenberger pointed out that although Trump’s temporary prohibition was lifted, this second requirement was willfully and intentionally ignored in Trump’s case. Trump’s directive was made while Dorsey was away.
According to Shellenberger, during the week of January 4–8, 2021, Dorsey had a vacation in French Polynesia. Many of the chief executive’s allocated tasks went to senior executives, including former Twitter Heads of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde, who Shellenberger believes were “overwhelmingly progressive.”
According to Shellenberger, between 2018 and 2022, Twitter workers donated 96%, 98%, and 99% of their political donations to Democrats.
Shellenberger claims that Roth tweeted in 2017 that the White House was presently home to “ACTUAL NAZIS.”
The Twitter staff “recognise the line between their own politics & Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS), but they also participate in complex interpretations of content to squelch prohibited messages,” Shellenberger added.
Trump was permanently suspended as a result of Dorsey’s memo from the day before, which was in response to how his posts were being “received and perceived.”
When Musk acquired the business and assumed control as CEO, Trump’s access to Twitter was restored. Trump has already told Fox News Digital that he intends to keep using his social media network, Truth Social, but he hasn’t taken back control of his account.
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