Twitter applied a warning label to a late-election night tweet from Donald Trump accusing Democrats of trying to “steal” the election through fraudulent means.
The tweet disappeared from Twitter soon after it posted, possibly because the White House wanted to correct a spelling error (Trump had spelled “polls” as “Poles”).
When it reappeared, it carried the following message from Twitter: “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” It also added a link to its Civic Integrity policy page.
We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
The White House posted the same message to Facebook, but Facebook only applied a label saying that voting would “continue for days and weeks” and pointing to a page containing updated election results. It didn’t explicitly call the president out for being misleading.
The assertion in Trump’s tweet is hardly surprising. The president declared vote fraud even after winning the election in 2016. But with many mail-in votes still left to be counted, it’s a particularly dangerous time to suggest those votes are invalid.
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