Senator Kamala Harris demanded Twitter to suspend the account of President Donald Trump in the wake of his ongoing attacks on lawmakers as well as the whistleblower whose complaint was detailing Trump’s ties with Ukraine.
“The President’s tweets and his behavior about this are just further evidence of the fact that he uses his power in a way that is designed to beat people down instead of lift people up,” Harris, a 2020 presidential candidate, said on CNN. “If you look at what he’s been tweeting today directed at the whistleblower, I frankly think that based on this and all we’ve seen before, including attacking members of Congress, that his Twitter account should be suspended.”
The Democratic senator was arguing that “there is plenty of evidence to suggest that [Trump] is irresponsible with his words in a way that could result in harm to other people.”
The Hill said it requested a comment on Harris’ call, but Twitter did not respond immediately.
The President has long been using Twitter as his platform to attack his political opponents throughout his presidential tenure. However, Trump has recently used Twitter to lash out at an intelligence community whistleblower responsible for a complaint regarding his interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The complaint, which was released last week, accuses Trump of a broad effort to pressure Ukraine into investigating 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter over unsubstantiated allegations of corruption.
Trump tweeted on Sunday that the complaint represented him in a “totally inaccurate and fraudulent way” and suggested that the figure was “spying.”
“Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!” he wrote.
In a series of tweets early Monday, the President also questioned whether House Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff should be arrested for treason for exaggerating parts of a July 25 phone call Trump had with Zelensky.
“Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people,” Trump tweeted. “It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?”
Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper whether suspending Trump’s Twitter account would add more fire to the President’s base, Harris acknowledged that it probably would. But she insisted that Trump’s behavior warranted such an action.
“We have to also agree that when the president of the United States speaks, her words are very powerful, and should be used in a way that is not about belittling, much less harming anyone. And this president has I think never fully appreciated that responsibility,” Harris said. “If he’s not going to exercise self restraint, then perhaps there should be other mechanisms in place to make sure his words don’t harm anyone.”
According to the Whistleblower Protection Act, federal agencies are prohibited from threatening retaliation against individuals who raise concerns of wrongdoing within the government.
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