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Donald Trump is an American businessman, television personality, and President-elect of the United States. He was born in 1946, in Queens, New York. Trump is the President and Chairman of The Trump Organization, which is involved in real estate, entertainment, and hotel ventures across the world. He hosted 14 seasons of NBC’s reality show Celebrity Apprentice.  Trump announced he was running for president on June, 16, 2015 and won the election. He is married to Melania Knauss and has five children.

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11 Dec, 2022

The Twitter Files 4 – The Removal of Donald Trump (Post Jan 7)

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Following the release of The Twitter Files Part 3, which detailed senior Twitter staff’s actions up to January 7, 2021, Musk, through Shellenberger, releases The Twitter Files Part 4: The removal of Donald Trump: January 7. The files details how Twitter staff  created justifications and unique policy changes so they could ban President Trump from the platform, while having no consideration for free speech issues.

After Jan 6, Michelle Obama; tech journalist Kara Swisher; the Anti-Defamation League, and many others called for Trump to be banned from Twitter. At that time, CEO Jack Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia and left the handling to Yoel Roth (Global Head of Trust and Safety) and Vijaya Gadde (Head off Legal, Policy & Trust).

Schellenberger notes that in 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats and that Roth had previously tweeted that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE”.

On Jan 7, Dorsey emails employees to say Twitter should remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension. Around 11:30am PT Roth shares with colleagues that Dorsey had approved a system where five violations (“strikes”) would result in permanent suspension.

GUESS WHAT. Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.

At this point, Trump had four strikes.

On Jan 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the “risk of further incitement of violence”. Twitter says its ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted”, despite the company saying in 2019 that it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”

Shellenberger notes that the only serious concern expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization.

This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…

Roth then asks colleagues to add “stopthesteal” & [QAnon conspiracy term] “kraken” to a blacklist of terms to be deamplified. Roth’s colleague objects that blacklisting “stopthesteal” risks “deamplifying counterspeech” that validates the election. Other employees note that Kraken is the name of a cryptocurrency exchange and allowlist it. Other struggle with shared screenshots of Trump’s tweet.

Around noon, a confused senior executive in advertising sales sends a DM to Roth.

jack says: ‘we will permanently suspend [Trump] if our policies are violated after a 12 hour account lock’… what policies is jack talking about?”

Roth replies:

*ANY* policy violation

The executive then asks if Twitter is dropping its “Public-interest exceptions” policy, which allows the content of elected officials, even if it violates Twitter rules, “if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern”. Six hours later, at 7:18pm, Roth replies:

In this specific case, we’re changing our public interest approach for his account to say any violation would result in suspension.

At 12:27am Roth pushes for a permanent suspension of Rep. Matt Gaetz even though it

doesn’t quite fit anywhere (duh)…I’m trying to talk [Twitter’s] safety [team] into… removal as a conspiracy that incites violence.

Around 2:30, comms execs DM Roth to say they don’t want to make a big deal of the QAnon ban to the media because they fear “if we push this it looks we’re trying to offer up something in place of the thing everyone wants,” meaning a Trump ban.

After an engineer expresses concerns that Trump’s account is being treated differently to others, Roth says:

To put a different spin on it: policy is one part of the system of how Twitter works… we ran into the world changing faster than we were able to either adapt the product or the policy.”

10 Dec, 2022

The Twitter Files 3 – The Removal of Donald Trump (Pre-Jan 6)

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Musk, through Taibbi, releases the third installment of The Twitter Files, titled THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP Part One: October 2020-January 6th.

The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th. We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies. This first installment covers the period before the election through January 6th.

Taibbi provides internal Twitter messages indicating that as the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with Twitter’s rules, and began to speak of “vios” (violations) as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.

As described in Twitter Files 2, a core group, working above and outside of Twitter’s standard content moderation rules, would make ad hoc decisions on VITs (Very Important Tweeters).

Messages from Yoel Roth (Head of Trust & Safety) show he met weekly with the FBI, DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Regarding the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story ban, Roth told those agencies:

We blocked the NYP story, then unblocked it (but said the opposite)… comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots… in short, FML (f*ck my life).

Based on alerts sent by the FBI, Roth flagged tweets with warning labels. Taibbi says he could not find any such requests from Trump’s team or Republicans:

Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.

In addition to issues with Trump, Taibbi also recounts a long discussion about a joke made by Mike Huckabee about mailing in fake ballots and conversations promising to hit the actor James Woods “hard” in future, even though he had not violated any rules. Meanwhile, disputed pro-Biden tweets were approved.

Regarding Trump, Taibbi says that Twitter attached automated control “bots” to his account, which triggered automated moderation actions. Taibi says that all these bots and rules were abandoned on January 6.

The firm’s executives on day 1 of the January 6th crisis at least tried to pay lip service to its dizzying array of rules. By day 2, they began wavering. By day 3, a million rules were reduced to one: what we say, goes

Around 3:30 PST on Jan 6, Roth “bounced” (put in a 12 hr timeout) three of Trump’s tweets. A company-wide email was sent by Gadde explaining that future violations would result in a permanent suspension.

After Trump tweeted “Go home with love & in peace” mid-riot, Twitter staff wrote:

What the actual f*uck? Sorry, I actually got emotionally angry seeing that. Turns out I’m not a full robot. Who knew?

Taibbi concludes:

By the end of the first day, the top execs are still trying to apply rules. By the next day, they will contemplate a major change in approach.

Taibi says more files will be released over the coming days.

5 Dec, 2022

Musk to Trump: ‘The Constitution is greater than any President’

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After Trump posts that Musk’s revelations about how Twitter staff withheld information about Hunter Biden’s laptop should result in ‘the termination’ of The Constitution:

So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!

Musk responds:

The Constitution is greater than any President. End of story.

20 Nov, 2022

Musk says Trump will be reinstated after 52% poll win

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Musk’s poll, asking if former President Trump’s account should be reinstated, ends at 51.8% Yes to 48.2% No. Musk claims 134 million people saw the poll, with over 15 million votes were cast. When the poll first started, Musk claimed it was receiving one million votes per hour.

Musk comments:

The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.

8 Jan, 2021

Gadde permanently suspends Trump from Twitter

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Gadde, the head of Legal & Policy at Twitter, tweets that Trump has been banned from using the platform, ‘due to the risk of further violence’:

The account of @realDonaldTrump has been permanently suspended from Twitter due to the risk of further violence. We’ve also published our policy enforcement analysis – you can read more about our decision here:

Which links to Twitter Safety’s posts about the ban:

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence. In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.

Stillitano: Trump could prevent US hosting 2026 World Cup

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Stillitano tells delegates at Soccerex Global Convention in Manchester :

Every day I wake up and I see our president has made a new tweet. The only thing that could possibly derail it is some crazy action on the part of our government but I can’t even imagine that. It’s ours to lose. I can’t imagine we don’t have the World Cup. I saw Sunil Gulati – our president – was almost gleeful in talking about how this was going to be by far the most profitable World Cup. All the stadia are done already, all the highways are done, the train stations are done. The hotels are there in the cities. I talked to contacts within FIFA, UEFA, CONCACAF and CONMEBOL and I think it’s almost a given that it’s going to be in the US. I’d be shocked if they lost.

Legend on Trump: ‘He calls people liars because he is a liar’

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Legend says Trump’s attacks on others are his own flaws projected onto others:

I feel like it’s not super controversial. I think Trump is an embarrassment to the country. And his approval rating is terrible.

John Legend slams Donald Trump - Tune In! Variety TV Summit

Trump to flood survivors: ‘Have a good time!’

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While visiting flood survivors, Trump says:

As tough as this was, it’s been a wonderful thing… I want to congratulate everybody that’s worked so hard. It’s been an incredible five days, six days. It seems like it’s been much longer than that, but actually it’s going so well that it’s going fast, in a certain sense. Have a good time, everybody!

Trump: South Korea ‘appeasement’ talk will not work

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Trump tweets after Pyoongyang’s nuclear test :

South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!

Trump ends DACA, with 6-month delay

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President Trump decides to end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrive in the country as children. Senior White House aide:

Congress should’ve gotten its act together a lot longer ago.

White House press secretary Sanders:

A decision is not finalized. We will make an announcement on Tuesday.

3 Sep, 2017

Cook: I stand with ‘Dreamers’

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Apple CEO Cook tweets that he told Trump to keep the U.S. in the Paris climate deal and pushed Trump to show more compassion for immigration issues, including DACA.:

250 of my Apple coworkers are Dreamers. I stand with them. They deserve our respect as equals and a solution rooted in American values.

11 Jul, 2017

White: Trump will be watching fight

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Post press conference, White says unlikely President Trump will attend the fight, but he will be watching:

They called me yesterday and I don’t think they’re gonna come, but they’ll be watching… [President Trump] feels he’ll ruin the event if he shows up. The Secret Service is going to have to have to go through the place. They have to shut down streets and create crazy traffic.

21 Mar, 2017

White: People need to give McGregor and Trump a chance

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White says people should give Trump and McGregor a chance.

I do [think the McGregor-Mayweather fight will happen]. I don’t know [when]. There’s too much money involved…The great things about fights is you never know who’s gonna win…If it was guaranteed that Floyd was going to win this fight why would you pay for it. Conor’s 27, Floyd’s 40. Conor’s the bigger, stronger guy. He’s got knockout power. It’ll be an interesting fight.

On Trump:

I spoke at the RNC, so I was a huge supporter. Everybody needs to give him a chance. I’ve got 17 years’ experience with this guy. Always been good to me. Always been a standup guy. Give him a chance and let’s see what happens.

UFC Prez Dana White Says McGregor Vs. Mayweather Matchup Will Be An 'Interesting Fight'

3 Feb, 2017

Trump will water down Dodd-Frank

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President Trump will sign an executive order to water down the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory framework put into effect in response to the financial crisis. White House National Economic Council Director Cohn:

Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because we’re not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year.

Steps down from Trump advisory board

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Kalanick steps down from President Trump’s economic advisory group after criticism from his staff and the public. Kalanick:

Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that. Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community. The implicit assumption that Uber (or I) was somehow endorsing the Administration’s agenda has created a perception-reality gap between who people think we are, and who we actually are.

2 Feb, 2017

Twitter staff donate $1m against Trump immigration order

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Nearly 1,000 Twitter employees donate more than $500,000, to the American Civil Liberties Union, to fight Trump’s temporary ban on refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. The donations are matched by CEO Dorsey and Chairman Kordestani. Twitter lawyer:

Our work is far from done. In the coming months we’ll see a flurry of legal challenges, legislative pushes and public pronouncements. But as long as civil liberties are threatened, I’m proud to know that as individuals we will stand up to defend freedom and look after people.

Alabed asks Trump about hunger

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In a series of tweets Alabed asks President Trump if he has ever felt hunger.

Have you ever had no food, no water for 24 hours? Just think of refugees and the children of Syria…Dear Trump, banning refugees is very bad. Ok, if it’s good, I have an idea for you. Make other countries peaceful.