Twitter restricted Donald Trump Jr.’s ability to tweet after he posted a video featuring a doctor making false claims about coronavirus cures and stating that people “don’t need masks” to prevent the virus from spreading, a Twitter spokesperson said Tuesday.
Some of the account’s functionality, including the ability to tweet, will be limited for 12 hours, the spokesperson said.
The video, which was published by the right-wing media outlet Breitbart News and went viral online on Monday, featured a group of doctors making false and dubious claims related to coronavirus, including that masks are unnecessary.
Twitter (TWTR), Facebook (FB) and YouTube removed the video after it started to go viral.
President Donald Trump also retweeted multiple versions of the video on Twitter, but he did not upload a version of the video to the site. His son did, which is why Twitter only took action against Trump Jr.’s account, a company spokesperson said.
Andy Surabian, Trump Jr.’s spokesperson, had tweeted earlier that Twitter had suspended the president son’s account. Twitter said in a statement that the account had “not been permanently suspended.”
Twitter has asked the President’s son to delete the tweet with the video. The company has already removed it from public view.
Surabian said in a statement to CNN that Twitter’s move was “further proof that Big Tech is intent on killing free expression online.”
