Less than 24 hours after the United States passed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, the president went on a deranged rant about Twitter fact-checking two of his grossly misleading tweets about mail-in voting. Most states allow for absentee voting, Trump himself voted by mail in 2018, but it’s a process that Democrats want to expand in order to allow American voters to cast their ballots from home in 2020 in order to maintain social distancing and avoid contracting or spreading the virus.
After Trump spent Thursday afternoon distracting from the dismal job of leadership he’s done in combating the spread of COVID-19 by announcing an executive order meant to regulate social media outlets from “censoring” his right to lie about voting, the most important process in the country, even Fox News’ Neil Cavuto spoke up.
‘What is shocking in those comments is that he was open to shutting down Twitter…a quick fact-checking is what got the president’s ire. He said he was being policed on that He was being policed on that because he was wrong. He was policed on that because he said millions of illegals were getting ballots when that simply was not the case.’
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2020
Trump’s press conference on Thursday dialed up the drama, insisting that conservatives have been censored on social media, “shadow banned,” and mistreated by social media platforms for political reasons. Just like his threats about absentee voting resulting in widespread mail fraud, this isn’t true, but he really needs to deflect from his current massive failures.
‘We’re here today to defend free speech from one of the greatest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly, and you know what’s going on as well as anybody. It’s not good. They’ve had unchecked power to censure, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter virtually any form of communication between private citizens or large public audiences.’
Twitter responded to the president’s comments. According to NBC News:
‘A representative for Twitter told NBC News this week that the tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.” The spokesperson added that the company rolled out a policy this month to combat misinformation.’
Additionally, the Twitter Safety account tweeted out an explanation for their decision to fact-check the president’s misleading tweets.
Featured image screenshot via YouTube
