The White House thumbed its nose at Twitter on Friday by reposting a President Donald Trump tweet that the social media giant had just taken the unprecedented step of hiding, because it violated the platform’s rules.
The tit-for-tat marked a new escalation in the row between Twitter and Trump, who has more than 80 million followers and uses tweets daily to announce policies, attack opponents, and comment on breaking news.
Twitter concluded that Trump fell afoul of its policies with a late night tweet on violent anti-police protests in Minneapolis, when he called the protesters “THUGS” and warned of military intervention.
“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump tweeted.
Twitter said his words were “glorifying violence” and hid the post.
However, the official White House account then dared Twitter to take further action by retweeting the same post.
This came a day after Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office seeking to transform the way social media are regulated. That followed Trump’s fury over Twitter tagging two of his tweets with fact checks, which was also an unprecedented measure.
Trump claims that the platform, where he dwarfs the presence of his Democratic rival in the November presidential election, is biased against him.
Trump’s social media director and Twitter feed manager, Dan Scavino had his own response, also posted in tweet form:
“Twitter is full of shit – more and more people are beginning to get it,” he wrote.
