Rep. Matt Gaetz is pushing back after Twitter put a warning label on one of his tweets saying it violated the company’s rules about “glorifying violence.”
Twitter, which has generated controversy for putting a fact-checking label on tweets from President Trump, appended the notice to the Florida Republican’s Monday tweet about the loosely organized left-wing group antifa, which is short for anti-fascist. Antifa has been blamed for inciting violence during the George Floyd protests, and Trump said Sunday that the United States would designate it a terrorist organization.
“Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” read Gaetz’s tweet that got flagged. The social media giant’s warning limits the number of ways people can interact with it, including likes and retweets.
The lawmaker responded to a Monday night text from the Washington Examiner about the label by sending a screenshot of a tweet from the president that simply read, “REVOKE 230!”
Trump’s tweet was in reference to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
A political maelstrom firestorm erupted last week when Twitter affixed a “get the facts” alert under some of Trump’s tweets targeting California’s mail-in ballots. The president then accused the social media platform of interfering in the presidential election. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida has said that Twitter “should no longer be shielded from liability” if it moves from its place as a social media forum. Following Twitter’s move, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to reevaluate the provision.
Gaetz also responded to Twitter’s warning label on Monday.
“Their warning label is my badge of honor. Antifa is a terrorist organization, encouraging riots that hurt Americans. Our government should hunt them down. Twitter should stop enabling them,” Gaetz tweeted. “I’ll keep saying it.”
