Twitter briefly limits users interacting with Trump’s tweets about ‘stolen’ election

by Celine Castronuovo - 12/12/20 9:46 AM ET

Twitter on Saturday prevented users from liking and replying to a series of tweets from President Trump in which he repeated false claims that he won the election and that the race was “stolen” from him, though the company later reversed the move.

In three separate tweets Saturday morning, Trump responded to the Supreme Court’s decision to throw out a lawsuit from Texas aiming to nullify President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Trump cited the dissenting opinion from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito expressing their view that the court is obligated to hear interstate disputes.

Aside from this jurisdictional disagreement, however, the two more conservative justices indicated they joined the court’s seven other members in siding against Texas.

“This is a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice,” Trump wrote. “The people of the United States were cheated, and our Country disgraced. Never even given our day in Court!”

“Justices Alito and Thomas say they would have allowed Texas to proceed with its election lawsuit.” @seanhannity This is a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice. The people of the United States were cheated, and our Country disgraced. Never even given our day in Court!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020

In separate tweets limited by Twitter, the president claimed that he “won the election in a landslide” and that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) allowed votes to be “stolen” from him.

Both of these states officially certified their votes for Biden, with Arizona awarding the former vice president 11 electoral votes and Georgia giving him 16.

I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but remember, I only think in terms of legal votes, not all of the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere! What a disgrace!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020

Who is a worse governor, @BrianKempGA of Georgia or @dougducey of Arizona??? These are two RINO Republicans who fought against me and the Republican Party harder than any Democrat. They allowed states that I won easily to be stolen. Never forget, vote them out of office!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020

Twitter placed a warning label on each of these tweets Saturday, writing, “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”

However, Twitter users for at least an hour were not able to like or reply to any of the tweets.

never seen Twitter do this before. Much stricter engagement with 3 Trump tweets this morning pic.twitter.com/TddOPuk3um

— David Mack (@davidmackau) December 12, 2020

Instead, when users attempted to react to or share the tweet, a message popped up from the platform reading, “We try to prevent a Tweet like this that otherwise breaks the Twitter Rules from reaching more people, so we have disabled most of the ways to engage with it.”

The message noted that users could still retweet the message with a comment, although the other sharing functions had been removed. The platform included a link to an explanation of its rules and regulations.

A Twitter spokesperson later Saturday morning said in an emailed statement to The Hill that the actions on the tweets had been reversed.

“We inadvertently took action to limit engagements on the labeled Tweet,” the spokesperson said. “You can now engage with the Tweet, but in line with our Civic Integrity Policy it will continue to be labeled in order to give more context for anyone who might see the Tweet.”

“Throughout the year, we made product changes and policy updates to encourage more thoughtful consideration and reduce the potential for misleading information to spread on Twitter,” the spokesperson added.

Trump has blasted Twitter in the past for its warning labels on his tweets and has pushed to strip a key liability shield for social media platforms that offers protections for third-party content posted on their sites.

The president’s Saturday tweets are only the latest in a series over the past month promoting false claims about the election and airing his disapproval at states and elected officials who would not overturn results.

On Friday, Trump tweeted that the Supreme Court “really let us down” in its decision to throw out the Texas case.

“No Wisdom, No Courage!” Trump added.

The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020

In a tweet later in the morning Saturday, Trump signaled his plans to continue challenging the election results despite the fact that his claims of widespread voter fraud and voting irregularities have been thrown out by several courts across the country.

“WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” he wrote.