Twitter said Tuesday that it had suspended the first son’s account for 12 hours after he retweeted a quickly debunked video related to COVID-19 from his father’s account that violated the company’s policy on “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19” and which was boosted by the far-right news site Breitbart.
The video in question featured a group from “America's Frontline Doctors” standing in front of the Supreme Court of the United States alongside Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) with no masks on, in which they state that face coverings are not needed in order to hinder the spread of the coronavirus.
The staged news conference, which coincidentally aligns with the US president’s reelection talking points of downplaying the gravity of COVID-19, was “organized and sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots,” wrote Breitbart, the only outlet to promote the video before it was removed from social media sites for violating their community guidelines.
The video touting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 racked up 17 million views on Facebook before being removed, according to Breitbart.
