Outgoing US President Donald Trump, who directly communicated with fans and slams critics on Twitter for four years, has found himslef locked out of his favourite medium in the last days of his presidency. As we have been unable to hear directly from Trump on how he felt about the ban, a senior administration official described that the president went “ballistic,” Politico reported.
Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter due to the "risk of further incitement of violence", the social media giant announced, days after his supporters stormed the US Capitol and caused the deaths of four civilians and a police officer.
The unprecedented move by the California-based social media platform comes after Trump tweeted that he would not attend the inauguration of his successor Joe Biden on January 20.
At the time of permanent suspension, Trump had 88.7 million followers and followed 51 people.
As Trump remains holed up at White House, without a tweet or an interview, Politico reported that he is “scrambling to figure out what his options are.”
After being locked out of both Facebook and Twitter, Trump issued a statement via his supporters. He said: "I predicted this would happen. We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!"
"Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely. "STAY TUNED!"' he said.
"As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," he added.
"Twitter may be a private company, but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long," Trump said.
Many had predicted that Trump would move to Parler, a favourite among his supporters, but that possibility has diminished further after the app was removed from Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. It has also been banned by Amazon Web Services, forcing it to go offline without a web hosting service.
