WASHINGTON (AP) — President Trump and Twitter tangled over truth and consequences last week as the social media giant flagged the president's tweets for spreading false information and inciting violence.
The episode left Trump fuming and threatening reprisals against the platform he uses constantly to lay out policy, praise himself, attack his critics and spread conspiracy theories and misinformation.
And in the same week that Twitter gave Trump a pass on his baseless innuendo about that former congressman, now broadcaster Joe Scarborough had committed murder, the organization was left juggling fraught questions about freedom of expression and when and how to gag a president.
On and off social media, Trump stretched the facts or shredded them as he tried to make the best of a U.S. death toll surpassing 100,000 from the coronavirus, misrepresented his predecessor's record on drug prices and toyed with the dangerous idea of taking insulin just because.
Here's a look back at last week.
100,000 Deaths
TRUMP: "For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn't done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number." — tweet Tuesday, before the official toll of Covid-19 deaths passed 100,000
THE FACTS: This opinion comes from his ego, not science, and evades the fact that the United States has experienced far more known sickness and death from Covid-19 than any other country. Well-documented failures in U.S. testing and gaps in containment in the crucial early weeks contributed to the severity of the crisis.
Early in the U.S. outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the death toll could reach or exceed 2 million if no steps were taken to contain the disease. That is to say, if public health authorities, governors, mayors, the president and the public did nothing.
But a do-nothing course was never an option and federal officials never forecast such a death toll. Trump's tweets also overlook the fact that the U.S. response — its weaknesses and strengths — was never all about him.
Trump v. Twitter
TRUMP, on Minneapolis protests and rioting: "I can't stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right. ... Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts." — tweets Friday
THE FACTS: His vow to send in the National Guard skirts vital context, though that's not the larger issue here.
Minnesota's governor already had activated the state's National Guard in response to the chaos. Trump was unclear on whether he intended to have the federal government tap National Guard personnel in other states for the purpose of law enforcement in Minnesota.
U.S. law prohibits federal use of the National Guard or active-duty troops for domestic law enforcement. That prohibition can be overidden only in extreme circumstances. The Pentagon on Friday took the rare step of ordering the Army to put several active-duty military police units on the ready to deploy to Minneapolis if called.
The larger issue was Trump's comment that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." That phrase from the violent front lines of the civil rights era evokes a brutal, hair-trigger police response and could be — and was — taken to mean Trump was threatening to have looters shot. Trump said later that is not what he meant and that he was not familiar with the origins of the phrase.