On Saturday morning, Twitter briefly prevented users from liking and replying to a series of tweets posted by Donald Trump disputing the results of the presidential election.
Trump’s tweets were in response to the Supreme Court’s rejection of Texas’ bid to overturn the presidential election on Friday. Trump called the decision “a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice,” claiming that “the people of the United States were cheated, and our Country disgraced.”
“Justices Alito and Thomas say they would have allowed Texas to proceed with its election lawsuit.” @seanhannity This is a great and disgraceful miscarriage of justice. The people of the United States were cheated, and our Country disgraced. Never even given our day in Court!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
This was just one of Trump’s tweets that was not only flagged by Twitter as a disputed claim, but was restricted to user engagement. However, Twitter soon restored interaction to Trump’s tweets.
“We inadvertently took action to limit engagements on the labeled Tweet,” a Twitter spokesperson tells Variety. “This action has been reversed, and you can now engage with the Tweet, but in line with our Civic Integrity Policy it will continue to be labeled in order to give more context for anyone who might see the Tweet.”
According to several Twitter users, including BuzzFeed journalist David Mack, a banner explaining the restricted engagement read: “We try to prevent a Tweet like this that otherwise breaks the Twitter Rules from reaching more people, so we’ve disabled most of the ways to engage with it. If you want to talk about it, you can still Retweet with comment.”
never seen Twitter do this before. Much stricter engagement with 3 Trump tweets this morning pic.twitter.com/TddOPuk3um
— David Mack (@davidmackau) December 12, 2020
Twitter also briefly limited interaction on tweets in which Trump claimed that he “won the election in a landslide” and alleged that there were “fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere,” as well as a tweet calling out the governors of Georgia and Arizona for not stopping the alleged fraud.
I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but remember, I only think in terms of legal votes, not all of the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere! What a disgrace!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
Who is a worse governor, @BrianKempGA of Georgia or @dougducey of Arizona??? These are two RINO Republicans who fought against me and the Republican Party harder than any Democrat. They allowed states that I won easily to be stolen. Never forget, vote them out of office!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
After Twitter’s brief limitation of Trump’s engagement, he continued to tweet about the election, saying “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” and further attacking the integrity of the Supreme Court.
WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
The Supreme Court had ZERO interest in the merits of the greatest voter fraud ever perpetrated on the United States of America. All they were interested in is “standing”, which makes it very difficult for the President to present a case on the merits. 75,000,000 votes!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2020
In response to Texas’ suit — which was brought against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the Supreme Court ruled that Texas had “not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”
After the dismissal of Trump’s suits concerning voter fraud in several states, he had been counting on the Supreme Court — which includes several of his own appointees, including Amy Coney Barrett — to aide in his efforts to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 election.