Twitter and Facebook censored President Trump again on Monday night, the eve of the election, by slapping warnings on his posts about late mail-in voting in Pennsylvania and how it could be ‘dangerous’.
Trump has been railing against a Supreme Court decision that was made last week that will allow Pennsylvania to count votes until three days after the election, if they are postmarked with a date showing they were sent on November 3.
It could mean a delay in the result in Pennsylvania which is a key battleground state and could sway the election.
Tensions in Philadelphia, the state’s capital, are already flaring after the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr.
Trump on Monday night posted the same message on Facebook and Twitter, writing: ‘The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one.
Facebook and Twitter censored Trump’s posts on Monday night in the final hours of campaigning
‘It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!’
Twitter replaced it with a warning which reads: ‘Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process’.
To be able to see the tweet, users must click on to it – out of the president’s feed – and expand it.
Users cannot like, comment beneath it or share it.
On Facebook, the post was flagged with a counter argument.
‘Both voting by mail and voting in person have a long history of trustworthiness in the US. Voter frauds is extremely rare across voting methods,’ their warning read, giving the Bipartisan Policy Center as the source.
It is the latest in a string of incidents whereby the two social media giants have played favorites with politics.
Last month, just two weeks before the polls opened, both sites censored a New York Post story that revealed suggestive emails between Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian businessman that suggested Joe Biden had met the businessman and had possibly even done him a favor when he was Vice President.
It raised huge questions of ethics and became a focal point of the last presidental debate.
But Facebook, without giving any explanation for it, claimed the story had to be checked by its own fact-checkers.
They have never applied such skepticism to stories by notoriously left-wing outlets like CNN or The New York Times.
President Trump in Michigan on Monday night, his final campaign event before polls opened
Violence has raged on the streets of Philadelphia since the killing of Walter Wallace Jr. There are fears that it could erupt again after the outcome of the election
Twitter said the story violated its privacy policies. After uproar from the right, they allowed it to be shared again.
Trump said earlier this week at a rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin – a hot-spot of the summer riots – that the Pennsylvania decision was likely to cause chaos.
‘On Pennsylvania they have so much time to do this thing. Oh – let them put their votes in and give them plenty of time,’ Trump said, using a sarcastic voice.
‘You know we have a date it’s called November third. We don’t have a date that says many days later. We don’t have a date that says you’re allowed to go and start putting your vote in later and we can tabulate it later take your time.’
‘There’s danger that there’s a lot of shenanigans that go on from that time forth,’ he said.
‘There’s a lot of bad things that can happen with the streets. You’re going to have a population that’s going to be a very, very angry and you just can’t do that,’ Trump said.
‘That is such a dangerous decision. That is such a disappointment when I heard that decision,’ Trump said.
He also called it a ‘political decision,’ and indicated some hesitation about attacking the court publicly, although he has done so on prior rulings against him.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t be speaking this way. I’m very disappointed on behalf of this country that a thing like this could happen,’ he said.
On Tuesday morning, during a phone-in interview with Fox and Friends, he doubled down on his comments.
‘Pennsylvania will be a disaster. It actually delays the election. Pennsylvania is a very important state, I think we’re going to win Pennsylvania.
‘It’s a very dangerous decision,’ he said.