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Amid riots on Capitol Hill Wednesday as Congress convened to certify the presidential election results, Trump posted a video to various platforms congratulating his supporters. Facebook and YouTube both deleted the video. Snapchat and Twitter also temporarily suspended his accounts, with the latter warning that he would ban Trump permanently if he continued to violate his policies.
Here is Zuckerberg’s statement in full:
The shocking events of the past 24 hours make it clear that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time to undermine the peaceful and legal transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters on Capitol Hill has rightly bothered people in the United States and around the world. We deleted these statements yesterday because we felt that their effect – and probably their intention – would be to provoke further violence.
Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after the inauguration take place peacefully and in accordance with established democratic standards.
Over the past few years, we’ve allowed President Trump to use our platform according to our own rules, sometimes removing content or tagging his posts when they violate our policies. We did it because we believe that the public has the right to have the widest possible access to political discourse, however controversial. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving the use of our platform to incite a violent insurgency against a democratically elected government.
We believe that the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our services during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block that we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
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