Twitter has temporarily suspended the account belonging to Donald Trump Jr, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, after he posted content that violated the company’s policies on misinformation related to the coronavirus pandemic.
The account will be suspended for 12 hours, during which time Don Jr. will be barred from posting new messages, liking or retweeting other posts. He will still be allowed to use Twitter’s Direct Message service to contact his followers. A Twitter spokesperson said this was not a suspension but rather a “temporary lockout until the Tweet is deleted—not a suspension.”
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The tweet that triggered the suspension linked to a video that contains multiple falsehoods and dubious claims about COVID-19 and its treatments. The post was deleted and replaced with a message simply saying “This tweet is no longer available.”
President Trump also posted several tweets linking to the video on Monday night. While his account was not suspended, the tweets were also deleted.
The video showed a group of people dressed in white lab coats claiming to be from an organization called “America’s Frontline Doctors.” The video, which was live-streamed by right-wing news outlet Breitbart, contained people claiming masks were not needed and that hydroxychloroquine was a “cure.”
“Tweets with the video are in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy. We are taking action in line with our policy,” the Twitter spokesperson said.
