Twitter on Friday permanently suspended the president @realDonaldTrump account, and with it, his direct access to almost 90 million followers.
It was a serious setback at the end of President Trump’s most difficult week in his four-year tenure at the White House.
TWITTER SUSPENDS ACCOUNT @REALDONALDTRUMP PERMANENTLY
The social media giant’s action – after months of signaling many of Trump’s tweets with warnings – came after the company said the president had violated its policies.
Although many conservatives criticized the move, the political consequences for the president were immediate and probably extremely painful.
“There are still other ways for him to get his message across, but it hurts,” a veteran Republican strategist who worked for Trump told Fox News.
President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo / Jacquelyn Martin)
The strategist, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more openly in the register, said Trump’s tens of millions of supporters and followers “can no longer immediately speak to him.”
“This is a big blow for him. This is how he was able to put his base on the same page with what he wants them to do and without it, it will be very difficult for him.”
TRUMP SUPPORTERS, LAWYERS, REACT TO THE TWITTER SUSPENSION
The Twitter move ended a tumultuous week for the president – and the nation.
The president on Friday faced a growing chorus of requests from Democrats in Congress, as well as from some Republicans, for his immediate removal from office – whether by resignation, impeachment or the use of the 25th Amendment.
Two days earlier, Trump supporters, protesting the joint session of Congress to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory over the president, invaded the Capitol. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died. The attack forced the building to be blocked, and the House and Senate were suspended for six hours until the building was cleared of intruders.
Supporters of President Donald Trump climb the western wall of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana)
The president, at a rally near the White House that he made the headline on Wednesday, encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol and show strength in opposing the certification of an election that he repeatedly claimed to have won and that had been stolen .
Two of Trump’s cabinet secretaries and some senior White House officials resigned in protest at the president’s actions. And an increasing number of high-ranking Republican lawmakers and other elected officials have criticized the president for apparently causing the Capitol invasion.
DEMOCRATS AND SOME REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MOVE TOWARDS THE IMPEACHMENT OF TRUMP AFTER THE MORTAL ATTACK ON THE CAPITOL
The attack came just hours after Democrats narrowly won the two second-round Senate elections in Georgia, giving them a minimal Senate majority to go along with their slight majority in the House of Representatives. With Biden taking office in less than two weeks, Democrats will soon control the legislative and executive powers of the federal government.
Trump is facing a lot of guilt on the part of some in the party for the Republican Party defeats in Georgia, due to his repeated claims that his narrow defeat in the state to Biden was due to fraud, and for his numerous vocal attacks on the Republican governor of Georgia and Secretary of State for refusing to assist in his attempts to alter the state’s electoral results.
Trump’s “horrible” week comes when the future ex-president promises to remain extremely influential in Republican Party politics after leaving the White House. And he pledged to support the challenges of the primaries in the 2022 mid-term elections against Republican governors and senators who refused to help their multiple unsuccessful efforts to end defeat in the presidential election and remain in power.
But Trump’s formidable influence on a party he has reshaped and owned over the past four years has clearly suffered a blow.
BIDEN RESPONSIBILIZES FOR TRUMP ‘IT IS NOT SUITABLE TO SERVE’ AS PRESIDENT
Longtime Republican consultant David Carney, a veteran of several Republican presidential campaigns over three decades, said the past few days have been “a horrible disaster” for Trump.
Reacting to the movement on Twitter, the president said in a statement on Friday night that “I predicted this would happen. We have negotiated with several other sites and will have a big announcement soon, while also looking at the possibilities of building our own platform on a near future. We will not be SILENCED! “
But it wasn’t just Twitter: Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were also suspended, at least until the end of his presidency, and possibly for longer.
FACEBOOK BLOCKS TRUMP INDEFINITELY AFTER THE CAPITOL MOTIMO RESPONSE
Carney, one of the top political advisers to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, said that the potential long-term blocking of his social media platforms would be “a major crushing blow to his prospects of becoming a king maker in the future because are your favorite platforms … It will be difficult to be a big influencer without those platforms. “
The president, at Wednesday’s rally near the White House, called legislators and Republican Party officials who opposed his pressure to overthrow the presidential election “weak Republicans”. And he told his supporters that “we have to give primacy to those who don’t fight. You give them primacy. We’ll let them know who they are. I can tell you, frankly.”
Trump’s comments contained some of his most explosive language to date against other party members and could have important implications for the upcoming midterm elections, when Republicans will attempt to recapture the two houses of Congress and expand their control over governors.
Top Trump political advisor Corey Lewandowski pointed out earlier this week that “the president has raised more than a quarter of a billion dollars since election day for his campaign and this will give him the opportunity to reach individuals who do not support Make America Great Again’s agenda in 2022, and that includes Republicans. “
“You have someone who is incredibly popular, who has a huge amount of money available and has the opportunity and the desire to evaluate and hold people accountable for their statements and records,” Lewandowski told Fox News.
HOW THE CAPITAL WEDNESDAY STORM WAS BAND
Trump’s hopes of playing a role of making kings in 2022 come while he is also flirting with a 2024 presidential bid to try to recover the White House.
But longtime Republican fund-raiser and lobbyist David Tamasi emphasized that, for Trump, “the line has been crossed … forever”.
Tamasi, who raised money for Trump in 2016 and 2020, told Fox News that “politically, there may be a way forward for him to try to meet certain primary challenges in certain red states, whether in the House or the Senate. That’s his problem. “
But he emphasized that “you will not receive any financial support from Washington or the business community or any Republican who is not associated with the periphery”.
Supporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol police outside the Senate House, inside the Capitol, on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 in Washington. (AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Dan Eberhart, a leading Republican Party donor and packer who also helped raise money for the president, told Fox News that “the desecration of the Capitol will not be forgotten”.
He also accused Trump’s rhetoric in Georgia’s runoff elections “costing the Senate majority leader [Mitch] McConnell his leadership position. ”
TRUMP SAYS IT WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE INAUGURATION OF BIDEN
Although Trump took a coup, he can still aim for many metrics to show his influence with his party.
While only eight Senate Republicans supported the president’s pressure to reverse election results after the attack on the Capitol, about two-thirds of House Republicans remained with Trump. This large group included the two main House Republicans: minority leader Kevin McCarthy and minority leader Steve Scalise.
Trump can also praise the 74 million Americans who voted for him in the November presidential election. Before this week, the president’s approval rating among Republicans remained in the stratosphere
Trump’s approval rating was 86% in a national Fox News poll and 90% in an NPR / PBS / Marist poll, both conducted in early December, and nine out of 10 Republicans gave him a thumbs up in a USA Today / Suffolk University national survey conducted two weeks ago.
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New Hampshire State Representative Fred Doucette, who served as co-president of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaign in Granite State, stressed that the president will “absolutely” have an influence in the future. “I think he will remain a force,” he told Fox News.
Doucette noted that “Trump’s main supporters are Republicans, but some of the president’s ardent supporters are more supporters of the president than necessarily of the Republican Party.”
But he also acknowledged that “anyone would be foolish to say” that this week’s events would not “have an effect. They will certainly have an effect”.
The question going forward is – how much effect?
“It is too early to know what is going on,” added Carney.