Dems demand Twitter suspend Trump's account until all ballots counted
NEW YORK - Democratic lawmakers are urging Twitter to suspend President Trump's account, suggesting none of his tweets should be posted until all ballots have been counted in the 2020 presidential election.
The president, whose Twitter comments Wednesday complained about Democratic challenger Joe Biden's lead among mail-in ballots and claimed victory for himself in Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina before counting was finished, has been spreading "pure disinformation," Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly said on the social media platform.
“Suspend his account, @Twitter," Connolly wrote. "Valid votes are being counted. This is America, not Russia.”
Rhode Island's Rep. David Cicilline said Trump's Wednesday tweets were "a threat to our democracy.”
A number of officials ‒ including Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris ‒ have previously called for Twitter to block the president, according to Politico.
While the San Francisco-based platform has removed or flagged tweets from Trump before, it has yet to suspend his account, The Verge reported Wednesday. The social media giant did, however, tighten its policies on censuring misinformation in the runup to Election Day.
For example, "when people attempt to retweet a tweet with a misleading information label, [they would] see a prompt pointing them to credible information before [being] able to amplify it further," the San Francisco-based company explained in a Monday tweet.
"If we see content inciting interference with the election, encouraging violent action or other physical harms, we may take additional measures, such as adding a warning or requiring the removal of Tweets," the company added.
In a blog post updated the same day, the company said it would also label or remove tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate and add warnings on misleading tweets from U.S. political figures or U.S.-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers.
Wednesday posts that claimed President Trump had won in Pennsylvania from White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Eric Trump, the president's son, have since been labeled.
"Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted," the label read, with a link to a paged of verified results.
"Twitter has a critical role to play in protecting the integrity of the election conversation, and we encourage candidates, campaigns, news outlets and voters to use Twitter respectfully and to recognize our collective responsibility to the electorate to guarantee a safe, fair and legitimate democratic process this November," the company wrote.
Get breaking news alerts in the FOX5NY News app. Download for FREE!
Six of the president's 14 tweets and retweets on Nov. 4 have been labeled or hidden thus far. One claimed Democrats were fixing the election in favor of Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled," wrote Trump. "Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the ‘pollsters’ got it completely & historically wrong!”
Twitter, the White House and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from FOX Business.