"It's just a matter of when."
That's the conclusion of John Daniel Davidson, the political editor at the Federalist, regarding whether or not Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will ban President Trump from his platform.
"Dorsey will come up with a pretext, however absurd or cynical, as part of Twitter’s ongoing efforts to interfere in the 2020 election. It will probably consist of a charge that Trump has had one too many violations of some entirely subjective and impossible-to-define Twitter policy on abusive or harmful speech," he explained.
The social media company provided another "preview" this week when it added a "warning label" to a Trump statement.
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Twitter claimed the comments from the president were abusive.
But what, Davidson wondered, had Trump said?
"He said there would never be an 'autonomous zone' in the nation’s capital, and that any mob trying to take over D.C. streets would be met with 'serious force.'"
Such a zone already exists in Seattle, where radicals have seized sovereignty over three blocks of the city.
"In other words, the president promised to enforce the law. That was considered 'abusive' by Twitter," Davidson explained.
He noted the irony is the president is referring to people "who were actually engaged in abusive behavior."
"Trump sent the tweet after a mob vandalized St. John’s Episcopal Church and tried to pull down a statue of former President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square Monday night. Twitter justified the warning label by citing its policy against abusive behavior, which prohibits 'the targeted harassment of someone' or inciting other people to harass someone," he said.
Davidson called the company's determination that such a statement would be incitement is based on a policy that "is nothing more than subjective gibberish meant to provide a pretext for censoring whatever Trump might say that Jack Dorsey doesn’t like."
Twitter, weeks ago, claimed Trump was "glorifying violence" when he promised Minneapolis help from the National Guard if city officials couldn't get mass riots under control.
"It takes a willful suspension of reason and common sense to understand these tweets as either abusive or glorifying violence," he said.
Davidson pointed out what Twitter actually does allow: a video of a man berating a terrified woman after a traffic altercation.
He identifies her license plate, her address and more, as "she cowers in fear."
"It was clearly abusive and threatening behavior, and was reported as such by thousands of people who were shocked at what amounted to doxxing and harassment," he said.
But the site allowed it.
He concluded: "The plain fact, excruciatingly obvious at this point, is that Twitter’s criteria for what’s misleading, abusive, or harassing, or what 'glorifies violence,' is entirely one-sided and almost always enforced against conservatives and Republicans but never against leftists or Democrats. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Twitter to ban videos of rioters beating up passersby and torching storefronts, or Democrats lying, or left-wing accounts abusing copyrights. It’s not going to happen."