Twitter flags Trump tweet as violation

Twitter has tagged a tweet by President Donald Trump as a violation of its rules “about glorifying violence” after he threatened a harsh crackdown on protests in Minneapolis, warning that “any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

The move by the socialmedia giant is sure to inflame the growing hostility between the White House and Twitter, hitherto Trump’s favored mode of communication. After the company began flagging some of his tweets as misleading earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at limiting the immunity of some digital media companies over the content on their platforms.

In the same tweet about the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis, Trump denounced some of the demonstrators as “THUGS.” Twitter allowed the post to remain up “in the public’s interest” but blocked users from responding to it.

Floyd, who was black, died Monday after a white police officer was videotaped kneeling on his neck for several minutes. The incident has sparked outrage and protests across the U.S., including in Minneapolis itself, where demonstrators late Thursday overran and set fire to a police station near the spot where Floyd, 46, was pinned down.

Some stores have been looted, other buildings have been set ablaze and protesters have fired guns into the air. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has called in the National Guard.

Trump’s post about the demonstrations was his third to be flagged by Twitter, which slapped two fact-check warnings on his tweets castigating the use of mail-in ballots.