The suspended Twitter account of Donald Trump on an iPhone screen.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
- Trump slammed Twitter after it banned GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
- Trump said the platform “shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this country.”
- He is also trying to force courts to restore his Twitter account after it was permanently suspended.
Former President Donald Trump on Monday slammed Twitter as a “disgrace to democracy” after it suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of his most vocal supporters in Congress, for spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
But he is also trying hard to get his own Twitter account restored.
“Twitter is a disgrace to democracy,” Trump said in a statement issued through his spokesperson, Liz Harrington, a day after Greene was banned.
“They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country.”
He also criticized Facebook, from which he is also suspended, for banning Greene hours after Twitter did.
—Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) January 4, 2022
Twitter permanently banned Trump himself last January in the wake of the Capitol riot, saying his posts risked inciting further violence.
Trump’s successful run for president and his time in office were marked by his extensive use of a personal Twitter account, which had nearly 90 million followers before his ban.
On Twitter, he repeatedly attacked political opponents and, during his last weeks in office, repeatedly made baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
Since then he has repeatedly called the social media platform “really boring” and said the press releases he began issuing instead were “much more elegant.”
But his own attempts to get his account restored appear to betray his claim to be uninterested in the platform.
He asked a federal judge in Florida in October to force Twitter to restore his account.
In a preliminary injunction, his lawyers said the suspension was unfair and arbitrary.
They wrote that Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate.”
Trump announced in December plans to build his own social media platform called “TRUTH Social.”
The new venture has already hit a roadblock after federal regulators opened an investigation into the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) backing the new platform.