President Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd after speaking at the American Farm Bureau Federation convention in New Orleans, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey dodged a question about whether he’d ban President Trump from his favorite bully pulpit if he’d ask his followers to murder journalists.
“That would be a violent threat. We’d definitely … You know we’re in constant communication with all governments around the world. So we’d certainly talk about it,” Dorsey told HuffPost’s Ashley Feinberg in an interview.
When pressed whether Trump — who has repeatedly targeted the “fake news media” and incited violence among his base — would be booted from the platform if he issued a murderous directive, Dorsey waffled.
“I’m not going to talk about particulars. We’ve established protocol, it’s transparent. It’s out there for everyone to read,” he said. “We have, independent of the U.S. president, we have conversations with all governments. It’s not just limited to this one.”
The president — who has 57.2 million followers on Twitter — has been accused of violating the social media site’s policies, which prohibit violent threats, with his inflammatory tweets implying that the US might nuke North Korea.
In September 2017, Trump tweeted: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!”
Two days later, Twitter’s policy team explained that they had decided to leave Trump’s tweet — in which he used his nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — up because the company takes “newsworthiness” and “public interest” into account.
“So then is there anything that, say, Donald Trump could do that would qualify as a misuse?” Feinberg asked. “Because I know the newsworthy aspect of it outweighs a lot of that. But is there anything that he could do that would qualify as misusing the platform, regardless of newsworthiness?”
Dorsey punted again.
“Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked about this a lot, so I’m not going to rehash it,” he said. “We believe it’s important that the world sees how global leaders think and how they act. And we think the conversation that ensues around that is critical.”
This story originally appeared in the New York Post.
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