US President Donald Trump is preparing to fight Twitter and other social media platforms amid his final days in office, following his permanent suspension from the social networking giant, CNN cited an unnamed POTUS adviser as saying.
The adviser did not elaborate on how this possible fight would proceed, adding that it is "not just about President Trump, but this is literally about the 75 million Americans" who support him.
The source also claimed without clarifying that "Big Tech [companies, including Facebook] and Capitol Hill Democrats seem to have the magic ability to galvanise the Republican base in a way that only they know how to do".
Trump's Permanent Twitter Suspension
The remarks followed Twitter permanently suspending the US president's @realDonaldTrump account on Friday, with his campaign's @TeamTrump also blocked, shortly after the president's Twitter page was temporarily suspended.
Trump, for his part, tweeted from the US president's official @POTUS account that he would "look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the future".
The Friday move came amid Twitter's concerns that Trump may further use the platform to incite violence, after he continued disputing the results of the 3 November presidential vote following Wednesday's storming of the Capitol building in Washington, DC by rioters.
The company said Trump's subsequent tweets that his supporters have a "GIANT VOICE long into the future" and that "they will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!" is being interpreted as further indication that the president does not plan to facilitate an orderly transition.
On Wednesday, crowds of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building, where lawmakers were holding a session to officially count the Electoral College votes and confirm Democrat Joe Biden's presidential win.
The riots resulted in the deaths of five people and left dozens more injured, while the rioters also caused damage to parts of the Capitol building and its interior. In one of the tweets at the time, Trump urged his supporters "to go home now", calling for "law and order" to be observed.
In another development this week, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the president's Facebook and Instagram accounts will also be blocked for at least two weeks – until his presidential term is over.
This was preceded by Trump repeatedly going on Twitter in previous weeks to express his frustration over what he described as "voter fraud" and "the most corrupt" presidential election in US history.
The US president has repeatedly expressed scepticism about social media platforms, especially Twitter and Facebook, accusing them of shading "prominent Republicans" and of having a "Radical Left bias".
In a 2020 report, the Media Research Centre, a Virginia-based content analysis group, claimed that it had found that Trump was censored on Facebook or Twitter 65 times over the past year and a half, while Democrat Joe Biden has faced zero instances of censorship to his social media pages.
