Trump vs Twitter: White House hits back, calls out Khamenei tweet 'glorifying violence'

The White House slammed Twitter for letting "terrorists" and "dictators" abuse the social media platform after the company put a notice on US President Donald Trump’s tweet for “glorifying violence”. The White House, through its official Twitter handle, shared a tweet by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he had said that person killed in “jihad” will receive “one of the two excellent things”. The White House said that the tweet violated the rules against the glorification of violence but Twitter didn’t flag it.

'Shooting starts'

Earlier, Trump had tweeted on the ongoing protests in Minneapolis related to the death of a black man, George Floyd, who died after a white police officer kept pressing his knee against the victim's neck. The US President said that he has talked to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and military will take control in case of any difficulty, threatening that “shooting” will start if anyone tries to loot public property.

Twitter immediately flagged the tweet for violating the rules of the micro-blogging platform about glorifying violence and said that it has taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts. However, it decided not to remove the tweet saying it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance.

The US President has accused Twitter, which has already banned political ads, of meddling in the presidential polls and said that the micro-blogging site is doing “everything” in power to censor the elections in advance. Trump also signed an executive order targeting social media companies after the fact-check controversy.

Read: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Takes A Dig At Trump And Zuckerberg Over Twitter Fact-check Row