Trump campaign blasts ‘very dumb’ Twitter decision
President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign slammed Twitter on Wednesday over the company’s decision to stop running political ads on its platform.
“Twitter just walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue, a very dumb decision for their stockholders,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement.
“Will Twitter also be stopping ads from biased liberal media outlets who will now run unchecked as they buy obvious political content meant to attack Republicans?” he added.
The Trump campaign accused the social media platform of “yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known.”
{mosads}Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the policy change Wednesday, saying the company will no longer accept political advertising that promotes candidates or particular hot-button issues.
Dorsey said that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
“Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people,” he wrote in a lengthy thread explaining the policy change. “We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”
The move comes amid weeks-long controversy over the decision from Twitter’s much larger rival Facebook to allow misinformation in political advertising on its platform.
Facebook has been under fire from prominent Democrats for the policy, with many of those same Democrats lauding Twitter’s shift on Wednesday.
The controversy erupted earlier this month after Facebook said it would not remove an ad from Trump’s campaign that accused former Vice President Joe Biden without evidence of using his office to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s business interests.
Biden and other Democratic presidential contenders called on Facebook to remove the ad, but the company said it would not, citing concerns about limiting free speech.
The president’s campaign has prioritized digital advertising ahead of the 2020 race, pouring millions of dollars into content over a variety of online platforms.
It is unclear how much the campaign has spent on Twitter advertisements in particular.
Between 2016 and 2018, Twitter made a total of $1 million from political advertisements, according to researchers at New York University.
That same study saw Facebook pulling in between $89 million and $376 million in those two years.