Shortly after being banned permanently from Twitter late Friday, President Trump used the official government @POTUS account to rant about the social media giant supposedly being in cahoots with the “radical left” to silence him and the “patriots” who support him. The tweets were almost immediately removed by Twitter, which had announced just hours earlier that the president’s personal account had been “permanently suspended” and warned that any attempt by him to evade that ban with government accounts would lead to further suspensions. An attempt to use the @TeamTrump account to rant to his followers was also swatted down, with the account almost immediately suspended. While Trump was booted from the platform for repeatedly using inflammatory rhetoric to rile up his supporters—even after his supporters started the violent Capitol riot that left five dead—his now-deleted tweets from the @POTUS account largely continued in that vein. “We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH,” he wrote. Unfortunately for him, Twitter was not the only one to take a stand against incendiary content on Friday. Google Play also suspended Parler, a hotbed for MAGA zealots who’ve left or been banned from Twitter. Apple also reportedly gave Parler an ultimatum to either moderate its content or be removed from the App Store.
