President Trump on Tuesday took aim at Twitter, accusing the tech company of “discriminatory” treatment that he said affects his account’s ability to reach followers.
In a pair of tweets, Trump accused the tech platform of playing “political games” with feeds belonging to conservatives while quoting a guest on the Fox Business Network, who called Trump’s account the “best thing ever to happen to Twitter.”
Trump also pressed Congress to “get involved” with the social media platform.
{mosads}“’The best thing ever to happen to Twitter is Donald Trump,'” Trump tweeted, quoting Bartiromo. “So true, but they don’t treat me well as a Republican. Very discriminatory, hard for people to sign on. Constantly taking people off list. Big complaints from many people. Different names—over 100 M. But should be much higher than that if Twitter wasn’t playing their political games.”
“No wonder Congress wants to get involved — and they should. Must be more, and fairer, companies to get out the WORD!” he added, referring to congressional Republicans’ claims that tech companies including Twitter artificially suppress traffic on accounts owned by conservatives.
Trump and other conservatives have frequently accused tech platforms of anti-conservative bias and censorship and have claimed that companies such as Twitter “shadow-ban” right-leaning users from their platforms.
Social media platforms have repeatedly denied that they are censoring conservatives, and there is little evidence to back up Republicans’ claims of being shadow banned, or having their posts hidden from other users. In March, a federal judge appointed by Trump threw out a lawsuit from right-wing activists alleging that social media companies were discriminating against conservative voices.
Former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the onetime chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, recently sued Twitter and several individual users, arguing that the company facilitated defamation against him as part of an attempt to influence his reelection campaign.
This article was updated at 11:25 a.m. to correctly identify the target of Trump’s praise.