Fox News personality Pete Hegseth’s Twitter account was reinstated after he deleted the tweet that got him suspended from the platform.
Hegseth, 39, a Fox & Friends Weekend co-host, saw his account get blocked in December after Twitter ruled that posting a copy of the Pensacola Navy base shooter’s manifesto violated the community guidelines.
The former Army National Guard officer shared a statement Thursday on Twitter in which he acknowledged his return and the reason for it.
Hegseth said he was blocked “for exposing the words of an Islamist terrorist.” Hegseth claimed he didn’t delete the post in question intentionally, even though Twitter informed him that his account would be suspended until he did.
Hey @Twitter, I’m back…for now. pic.twitter.com/rTpDAUPw34
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) February 20, 2020
“A few nights [a]go, while checking my app to see if I was still blocked, I casually clicked the ‘remove’ button for the tweet —believing it would, at the least, be a two-step process. Instead, I was instantly back into my account. It was a sincere accident on my part,” Hegseth said.
He added that he believes he’ll be “banned” from Twitter shortly while taking the “opportunity to do what Twitter hates: destroy Leftism, expose Islamism, and fight for Americanism.”
Hegseth, who told the Washington Examiner that he was “fighting for free speech,” shared a copy of Saudi national Mohammed Alshamrani’s manifesto. Alshamrani killed three sailors and injured eight more in a Dec. 6 shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola. He was killed by a sheriff’s deputy who responded to the attack.
According to Twitter’s “terrorism and violent extremism policy,” no user is allowed to “threaten or promote terrorism or violent extremism.” It lists four examples that violate the policy, including: engaging in acts meant to benefit a terrorist organization, recruiting for a terrorist organization, providing services to further a terrorist groups’ agenda, and using the symbols or insignia’s of a terrorist group to promote them.
