California Sen. Kamala Harris followed up calls earlier this week for Trump to be suspended from Twitter with a formal letter to the social media giant’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, requesting the president be de-platformed.
“I write to call your attention to activity that President Trump has been engaged in on his Twitter account, which appears to violate the terms of the user agreement that your company requires all users on the platform adhere to,” Harris began to two-page note.
In the letter, the California lawmaker accused Trump of using his account “to target, harass, and attempt to out the whistleblower” and making “blatant threats that put people at risk and our democracy in danger.”
“I believe the President’s recent tweets rise to the level that Twitter should consider suspending his account,” she added. “When this kind of abuse is being spewed from the most powerful office in the United States, the stakes are too high to do nothing.”
“No user, regardless of their job, wealth, or stature should be exempt from abiding by Twitter’s user agreement, not even the President of the United States,” Harris concluded.
Dorsey has defended against calls to suspend the president’s account in the past, saying – without ever specifically naming Trump – in June that the social media company has “allowed certain tweets that violated our rules…because they were in the public’s interest.”
“In the past, we’ve allowed certain Tweets that violated our rules to remain on Twitter because they were in the public’s interest, but it wasn’t clear when and how we made those determinations,” Twitter’s safety team wrote in a blog post. “Serving the public conversation includes providing the ability for anyone to talk about what matters to them; this can be especially important when engaging with government officials and political figures.”
“By nature of their positions these leaders have outsized influence and sometimes say things that could be considered controversial or invite debate and discussion,” Twitter added. “A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable.”
(Cover Photo: Gage Skidmore)