After Donald Trump’s Twitter account was blocked by the company, the president resorted to using his official @POTUS handle and the campaign’s @TeamTrump accounts to slam the platform for “banning free speech” and “silencing” him with the action.
These messages were soon deleted by Twitter from the president’s official page, while his campaign’s account was also suspended for good, following the fate of @realDonaldTrump.
But before @TeamTrump went completely silent, burying away with it the president’s final tweets, it reportedly posted a peculiar pic of a Soviet Union flag-coloured Twitter logo, according to a screenshot shared by the Verge.
Some observers have argued the image of a traditional plain blue Twitter logo bird, coloured red and imprinted with a Hammer & Sickle symbol which is usually associated with the Communist movement, was posted in an apparent assault targeting Twitter’s policy of not allowing differences of opinions.
The screenshot of the Soviet-styled logo was also shared by other Twitter users but it’s now difficult to verify whether the message was indeed posted by the account after it was deleted for good.
Trump Permanently Suspended From the Platform
On 6 January, a group of protesters stormed the Capitol Building as the US Congress was about to certify Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
After the MAGA-hat-wearing mob broke into the building which houses America's bicameral legislature, President Trump called upon the protesters to “go home with love & in peace” but “remember this day forever” – the post that was deleted by the platform. It also suspended the president’s personal account for 12 hours for "repeated and severe violations” of Twitter’s Civic Integrity policy.
When Trump returned to Twitter on Thursday after a temporary ban, he sent out a video address, decrying “the violence, lawlessness and mayhem”. He confirmed that Joe Biden’s inauguration will take place on 20 January and that the transition will be “smooth, orderly and seamless”.
On Friday, he sent two other messages to millions of his followers: in the first one, the president cheered those “great American Patriots” who voted for him, saying that they will have “a GIANT VOICE long into the future”; the other one announced that he will not be attending Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Following this, the president’s personal Twitter was deleted for good. The company said that these messages are “being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate" and could "serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the inauguration would be a ‘safe' target, as he will not be attending".
The platform’s Safety department concluded that some of the president’s recent posts have been used “to incite violence”.
The Twitter team explained to the Verge that the president would not be able to avoid the ban by posting from other government accounts as his tweets would be immediately deleted. If he tries to create new accounts they would also be suspended “at first detection”, the company has said, confirming that the @TeamTrump page’s comeback should not be anticipated as well.
However, one of the president’s final tweets, posted through the @POTUS account, proclaimed that his team has now been “negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon”. They also have apparently been drawing a plan for creating their “own platform in the near future”.
“We will not be silenced!” the president proclaimed.