Times are dire across the pond and with election time approaching in the US, politicians are starting to consider alternative methods of voting that don’t put throngs of people together.
One politician, however, thinks that allowing people to vote via post is a recipe for disaster. That politician is of course President Donald Trump.
But it seems the president’s urge to tweet has landed him in mild water with Twitter.
A series of tweets where Trump rants about mail-in ballots and how fraudulent they are has been labelled as “potentially misleading” by Twitter.
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
Contained within the tweet (visible on the Twitter website and app) is a link to a fact check about mail-in ballots. That fact check refutes every claim made by Trump in his tweet.
It’s a rather extensive rebuttal of Trump’s claims and we recommend checking it out just to see how Twitter is using its platform and other sources to refute misleading information. You can find that fact check here.
This is rather notable as it’s the first time a claim by the president has been refuted by Twitter. According to a report from The Verge, this move by Twitter is in line with a new policy introduced earlier in May which seeks to limit the spread of harmful and misleading content.
Of course, Trump believes that Twitter is now interfering with the election somehow.
.@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….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
The President said that Twitter is stifling free speech and that he won’t allow that to happen.
Can we get a fact check on that please Twitter?