Why Won’t Twitter Take Down Trump’s North Korea Tweet?

This is only my opinion, and not the representation of Saintel Daily, LLC.

Twitter is finding itself in a strange place – having to defend Donald Trump.  I should clarify, they’re not actually defending Trump.  But they are having to defend the fact that they aren’t going to remove his recent tweet about North Korea.  If you don’t remember, on September 24, Donald Trump issued the following statement on Twitter:

Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!

Twitter’s rules prohibit violent threats, arguing that the Trump tweet fell into that category.  But does it? I think I made the argument in a previous post that this is all just childish.  This isn’t Trump actually issuing a threat. It’s Trump not realizing what he’s done.  He’s like the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving who just can’t help himself and after one glass of wine too many, he says something he shouldn’t.  But with Trump, there’s no wine involved.  And he says these things daily.

Twitter has said that they wouldn’t remove the tweet or suspend Trump’s account.  On one hand, this is good news for Trump.  But Twitter said something that I think would make Trump very angry.  In response to people saying that the tweet should be removed, Twitter let people know how it determines if a tweet is threatening.  Specifically, they look at a number of factors including its “newsworthiness” and whether it has “public interest”.  Oh snap!  Twitter is saying that this isn’t newsworthy, and there is no public interest in the story.  But Twitter is also saying that this has been their internal policy for a long time, and they will consider updating it in the future.  But will that mean the end of Donald Trump’s tweets?

If it is the end of his tweets, will he go insane? A lot of people think that Trump is only going to get the country into trouble with all of his tweets.  Kal Penn, actor and former aide to Barack Obama posted this on Twitter:

Seems pretty clear that you can’t threaten mass murder via nuclear war, right @twitter? Asking for 7.4 billion friends.

He’s kind of right, isn’t he?  Trump did kind of wage a war with North Korea with that tweet.  I’m on the fence as to whether or not this is an actual security issue.  I do think that Trump has a lot of power, but I also think he’s extremely childish.  And like I said before, can he even back this up? I have never held a high political office, but I think that you don’t decide to go to war lightly.  Many presidents have had to make these decisions, but none seem to have taken to social media to make the announcement.

Lastly, Trump seems to be getting his information wrong, or from incorrect sources.  He tweeted out on September 23, that Iran test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.  But U.S. Officials later said that the information was incorrect.  Trump didn’t have any real intelligence briefings on the matter.  Further, the missile that Trump was referring to had been fired earlier in the year.  Not as late as last week.  This kind of supports my theory that Trump is a child.  Maybe Twitter should take away his account.  I’m not sure that’s the answer, but it might be a start.