President Trump on Tuesday evening accused Twitter of “stifling FREE SPEECH” and interfering in the 2020 election by fact-checking one of his tweets on the issue of voting by mail.
“@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post,” the president tweeted Tuesday evening. “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”
The social media site placed a warning on two of Trump’s tweets for the first time earlier in the day, noting that his claim that California would send mail-in ballots to anyone living in the state was false and that mail-in ballots are already in use in several states, including Oregon, Utah and Nebraska. Trump himself also voted by mail in the Florida Republican presidential primary this year.
“These Tweets contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Hill.
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale had previously condemned the addition of the fact check, saying in a statement, “Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility.”