President Donald Trump has ironed against Twitter after the social media network suspended Republican Senator Doug Mastriano’s personal account on Friday, accusing the network of trying to “silence the truth” by banning the legislature. The account has now been restored after Twitter said it had made a “mistake”.
A Twitter spokesman said Newsweek in a statement, “This account has been suspended in error due to an alleged violation of our impersonation policies. This was an error. The decision was immediately revoked and the account was reinstated.”
In response to the suspension, Trump compared the actions of Twitter and a communist country and stated that the social network’s decision is not up to it.
“Wow! Twitter bans Doug Mastriano, a highly respected senator from the state of Pennsylvania, after doing a great job leading a hearing on the 2020 election fraud,” Trump tweeted. “They and the Fake News, working together, want to silence the TRUTH. We can’t let that happen. That’s what the communist countries are doing!”
A little less than an hour earlier, Pennsylvania State Senator Mastriano posted a screenshot of his phone in which his personal account was suspended. A message in the legislature’s account says the network is banning accounts that violate its rules.
“This censorship is unacceptable in America. A nation I have served for most of my adult life,” Mastriano tweeted from his official account. “The point of Twitter is to suspend this personal account, to prevent me from posting a message in my Senate account – to silence our voices.”
Newsweek contacted the office of Senator Mastriano to comment. This article is updated with all the answers.
Mastriano held a public hearing led by Republicans on alleged “election issues” in Pennsylvania earlier this week. At the meeting, voters in the state referred to fraud.
President Trump appeared on the phone at the event, falsely claiming that he had won the state instead of President-elect Joe Biden.
“These elections have been rigged and we cannot let that happen. We cannot let this happen to our country,” the commander-in-chief said at the hearing. “And these elections need to be reversed because we’ve won a lot in Pennsylvania and we’ve won a lot in all these swing states.”
A federal judge on Saturday dismissed Trump’s re-election campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania, saying he could not “justify deprivation of a single voter” in his final decision.
Mandel Ngan / AFP through Getty Images
Updated: 11/27/2011, 11:55 AM, ET: This article and headline have been updated to reflect Twitter’s comment on the reason for suspending your Mastriano account.
