WASHINGTON (CN) — Calling for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci went too far, Twitter told Steve Bannon on Friday, permanently banning the former White House strategist from its page.
The move came a day after Bannon singled out Fauci, who is considered the nation’s preeminent coronavirus authority as director of America’s National Institutes of Health, as well FBI Director Christopher Wray, on his live-streamed internet program “War Room: Pandemic.”
In video he posted simultaneously to YouTube and Facebook, Bannon said Fauci and Wray should “get with the program” or face violence.
“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England,” Bannon said. “I’d put the heads on pikes, right I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats.”
Facebook removed the post after it lingered for 10 hours and gained almost 200,000 views.
Alex Joseph, a spokesperson for YouTube, said in a statement that while the video was removed for violating policies against inciting violence, Bannon’s “War Room” page would remain active.
The account would be prevented from posting videos for a week, he said.
“We will continue to be vigilant as we enforce our policies in the post-election period,” Joseph said in a statement.
Since August, Bannon has been out on bail as he faces fraud charges in New York. The onetime driving force behind the right-wing Breitbart News was arrested off the Eastern coast of Connecticut, aboard the Lady May — a 150-foot yacht owned by Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman. Prosecutors say Bannon defrauding hundreds of thousands of dollars in a donor scheme related to funding the construction of a Southern U.S.-Mexico border wall. He and three accused co-conspirators, all members of a purported charity called We Build the Wall, have pleaded not guilty.
Amid continued uncertainty about the results from the 2020 presidential election, Bannon’s comments heighten tensions that are beginning to fray across America.
Philadelphia police on Thursday arrested two men from Virginia in connection with a plot to attack the Pennsylvania Convention Center — a processing center for the heavily Democratic county that is sorting through tens of thousands of mail-in ballots.
Even as such processing centers live-stream their operations, surrogates for the president are claiming without evidence that poll watchers have been denied access. Newt Gingrich, the first speaker of the House to be disciplined for an ethics breach, has called for poll workers to be arrested.
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