Angelo Carusone: Twitter banning Trump now is “a lot like senior administration officials resigning with only days left”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

In reaction to Twitter’s announcement that it will be permanently suspending Donald Trump’s account, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America issued the following statement:

These actions are long past due and appropriate. But, Twitter (and other platforms) doing this now is a lot like senior administration officials resigning with only days left - too little too late. Trump has repeatedly broken Twitter rules. If only Twitter and other platforms had acted earlier, Wednesday’s awful events could have been avoided. It is time for Facebook and other platforms to follow suit.

As Carusone points out, Donald Trump issued a call for violence on Twitter following Mitt Romney’s defeat in the 2012 election.

According to Media Matters research, daily interactions of right-leaning Facebook pages significantly dropped after Trump’s temporary Facebook suspension was implemented and that right-leaning, left-leaning, and nonaligned pages each earned roughly a third of total engagement during this time. Especially in light of Twitter's announcement banning Trump, this data shows what the impact of removing him permanently from Facebook could be.