Social media use by Donald Trump
[62] On October 24, 2018, The New York Times reported that Trump was still using his personal iPhones for phone calls, even though his aides and US intelligence officials have warned him that Russian and Chinese spies are listening.
[73] The ABA Journal wrote in 2017, "There's little caselaw on to what extent government use of social media can be considered official or a 'public forum,' which affords First Amendment protection to people who might be excluded based on their viewpoints.
"[111] Trump has been criticized for his practice of retweeting or copying material from social media accounts posting antisemitic, racist, or false information, such as claims exaggerating the number of crimes committed by black people.
PolitiFact noted that, besides being a five-fold exaggeration, the claim was sourced to the non-existent "Crime Statistics Bureau, San Francisco"; it later highlighted this retweet when awarding its 2015 "Lie of the Year" badge to Trump's entire presidential campaign.
[137] Another video was filmed in 2013 during the Syrian Civil War, showing a man, who is believed to be an Al-Nusra supporter, destroying a statue of Mary and stating: "No-one but Allah will be worshipped in the land of the Levant."
[142] Trump's actions were widely condemned both in the US and abroad by politicians, commentators and religious leaders of various faiths and across the political spectrum; also by several civil rights and advocacy groups and organizations.
[151][152] Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Theresa May said in a statement, "it is wrong for the president to have done this" and "Britain First seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions.
"[163] In August 2018, Trump tweeted that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to "closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers".
The tweet was sent shortly after a segment by Fox News where Tucker Carlson claimed that the "racist government of South Africa" was targeting white-owned farms for land reform due to anti-white racism.
In a tweet on June 9, 2020, Trump falsely claimed that a 75-year-old George Floyd protester in Buffalo, New York, who was knocked to the ground by two police officers, "fell harder than he was pushed", and could be an "antifa provocateur".
[208] On January 6, after a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and disrupted the counting of electoral votes, Twitter declared that they had indefinitely locked Trump's account for "repeated and severe violations" of the site's Civic Integrity policy.
[224][225] Trump tweeted the following day that the London Mayor was offering a "pathetic excuse" for his statement, and alleging that the mainstream media were "working hard to sell" Khan's explanation.
[221][222][226][227] When asked about these comments following a vigil held near Tower Bridge, Khan stated that he was busy dealing with the aftermath of the attack and declared that he has not "got the time to respond to tweets from Donald Trump".
[288] In an effort to press his campaign for the border wall between the US and Mexico, Trump repeatedly posted tweets seeking "to paint a portrait of widespread criminal conduct by undocumented immigrants.
[294] On July 23, 2020, Trump tweeted that the "suburban housewives of America" must read an article from the New York Post, claiming that his Democratic rival Joe Biden would "destroy your neighborhood and the American dream" if elected.
[314] His comments were criticized by Senator Kamala Harris (Democrat of California), who urged Twitter to suspend Trump's account,[315] and Representative Adam Kinzinger (Republican of Illinois), who called it "beyond repugnant.
[317] Mary B. McCord of Georgetown University Law School, a former Justice Department national security official, said that armed militia-movement groups were likely to take Trump's "civil war" tweets seriously.
Experts challenged the legality of many sections of the executive order as running afoul of the First Amendment, as well as making demands of independent agencies of the United States government that are statutorily outside presidential control.
Journalists[388] and civil rights leaders[389] criticized the company's standards, and Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout on June 1 to demand that management deal with Trump's posts.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, "The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor.
[31] Civil rights groups said that Trump's Twitter and Facebook bans were "long overdue" and that social media companies had excessively delayed in taking steps to counter political violence.
[420] Yaël Eisenstat, a former CIA officer who previously worked on election policy at Facebook, said: "I'm not going to applaud the move now when it is politically the most obvious, easy and – let's be frank – good business decision.
[425] Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador blasted the decision to ban Trump, saying that he favored prohibiting private companies from banning government officials and had directed officials to explore the possibility of creating a Mexican state-run social network; López Obrador compared such action by websites to the "Spanish Inquisition" while Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Poland's conservative government planned to introduce a bill to limit how social media companies could moderate content.
[427][428] In January 2019, Trump served hamburgers to the Clemson Tigers champion football team due to the White House's catering staff being furloughed during the federal government shutdown of 2018–2019.
"[440] Analyst Philip Bump of The Washington Post views Trump's Tweets as attempts to distract in times of unfavorable news related to the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
[c] In it, he discussed a variety of topics, ranging from serious issues such as the Libyan Civil War, Obamacare, and the American job market to less weighty matters, including the Vanity Fair Oscar party and his dislike of Mike McGlone's Rhetorical Questions advertisements for GEICO.
[528][better source needed] Trump's YouTube account was suspended for policy violations for at least seven days on January 13, 2021, following the attack at the United States Capitol; for this period it was no longer possible for new videos to be uploaded to the site.
[533] Three days earlier, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel had sent a company memo stating that "we simply cannot promote accounts in America that are linked to people who incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform.
[567] The site centered around a history of Donald Trump's presidency that did not make mention of two impeachments, of any COVID-19 death toll, of the economic crash that followed the pandemic, or of the Capitol attack that marked the end of his term.
[582][583] As Trump encountered further legal problems including the prospect of more civil and criminal trials, he made numerous passionate posts to Truth Social regarding these matters and those involved in them.
