Conservative commentator back on Twitter after controversial suspension

Conservative commentator Jesse Kelly is back on Twitter after his account’s suspension for unclear reasons triggered outrage among conservatives.

Conservative pundit @JesseKellyDC, whose Twitter ban earlier this week turned him into a cause celebre on the right, is now back on Twitter.

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) November 27, 2018

Kelly previously said he’d been told the ban was permanent. 

He told Hill.TV earlier Tuesday he had no idea why he was banned, saying he is very careful about what he posts. Twitter does not typically comment on individual account decisions. 

“The truth is, I understand how sensitive Twitter is. I understand that they are run by leftists, and they’re trying to run off people on the right, so knowing that, I’m fairly careful with it,” he said. 

{mosads}”Especially because it was a big tool I used to promote my show, to promote things that I had written,” said Kelly, who hosts a radio show in Houston. “So I wasn’t trying to get kicked off, I was trying to be good, and I got kicked off anyway.”

When asked about the decision to suspend and then restore Kelly’s account a Twitter spokesperson told the Hill, “The account was temporarily suspended for violating the Twitter Rules and has been reinstated.”

“We have communicated directly with the account owner,” the spokesperson added.

Kelly did not immediately respond to The Hill’s requests for comment.

Previously, Kelly said that Twitter told him his account was permanently suspended for “multiple or repeat violations of the Twitter rules.”

Twitter’s “range of enforcement options” states that users should be told if their accounts have been permanently suspended.

“When we permanently suspend an account, we notify people that they have been suspended for abuse violations, and explain which policy or policies they have violated and which content was in violation,” according to Twitter.

Kelly’s suspension elicited a wave of backlash from conservatives, including lawmakers such as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) and Sen.-elect Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). The suspension comes amid an ongoing debate over whether social media platforms are biased against conservatives. 

Jesse Kelly can’t stand me. And I think his tribal war scalping stuff is stupid and wrong.

But that doesn’t matter much compared to the bigger picture here: The trend of de-platforming and shutting down speech is a bad precedent for our free speech society. https://t.co/V11v6uDZY3

— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) November 26, 2018

Twitter recently banned a Marine vet & conservative pundit, Jesse Kelly, without explanation. This follows Twitter’s ban of Canadian feminist Megan Murphy for her speech. @jack told Congress Twitter doesn’t target political speech. Is that true?

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 27, 2018