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Kamala Harris Asks Twitter To Suspend Donald Trump For 'Civil War' and Whistleblower Tweets (theverge.com) 567

California senator and 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris has formally asked Twitter to suspend President Donald Trump's account, following Trump's attacks on a whistleblower and his claim that impeachment would start a civil war. From a report: In an open letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Harris says that Trump has used Twitter to "target, harass, and attempt to out" the person who filed an explosive complaint about Trump pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on rival candidate Joe Biden. Trump has been tweeting angrily about the complaint for several days now. Harris cites multiple messages where he calls the whistleblower "a spy" as well as a tweet where he called to arrest Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who has helped lead the investigation into Trump's actions, for "fraud and treason." Offline, Trump has arguably insinuated that the whistleblower should be executed for spying -- something Harris says makes his tweets more threatening. "These tweets should be placed in the proper context," she writes. Around the same time, Trump quoted a Fox News claim that "if the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office (which they will never be), it will cause a civil war-like fracture in this nation from which our country will never heal," which Harris also notes. "These tweets represent a clear intent to baselessly discredit the whistleblower and officials in our government who are following the proper channels to report allegations of presidential impropriety, all while making blatant threats that put people at risk and our democracy in danger," she writes. Twitter told The Verge that it has received the letter and plans to respond to Harris's concerns.
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Kamala Harris Asks Twitter To Suspend Donald Trump For 'Civil War' and Whistleblower Tweets

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  • by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:11AM (#59260868) Homepage Journal
    ....why not just remove all twitter accounts and shut the darned thing down?

    That might prove the most beneficial thing to ALL mankind at this point.....

    • by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:19AM (#59260896)
      I'm OK with that, as long as they shut Trump's off 24 hours before everyone else's. It's not even that I don't like the guy and don't agree with most of his policy, I just want to see the chaos.
  • They're both wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mononymous ( 6156676 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:18AM (#59260892)

    I strongly oppose our Cheeto-in-Chief, but it's un-American to try to silence the opposition.
    The correct response to bad speech is good speech.

    • I believe her argument here is that 45 is violating Twitter's terms of service. Not sure, I haven't RTFA, nor have I read Twitter's T&C. Even if the presidential account isn't suspended (which I think would be a bad thing) then it'd at least call attention to the echo-chamber rhetoric that many feel is poisonous.

      • by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @11:06AM (#59261472) Journal

        TBH Twitter doesn't follow twitter's own terms of service. The selective nature of who is and isn't banned from twitter looks like a complete arbitrary decision making in concert with unforgiving (and ignorant) AI.

        However, Harris just showed that she's for censorship, which should scare everyone who is rational. That alone is reason enough to never vote for her (or anyone who agrees with her). But it isn't.

    • by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:29AM (#59260948) Homepage
      Even when that speech is a thinly veiled call to violence by a charismatic leader? Do you know how the right wing militia and gun activist culture has been itching for a civil war since Bill Clinton was in office? We have a full generation that's been raised on the fear fueled by the events in Waco Texas. We have "Hell yes" Democrats calling for disarming citizens. The far right is convinced we are in the midst of a Soviet style communist takeover. And Donald Trump is calling for a civil war, dropping a lit a match in a fireworks store, if he's held accountable for his corrupt abuse of power.

      Good speech doesn't counteract the effect of yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater. Good speech won't counteract yelling "Civil War and COUP" in the middle of a bloodthirsty and paranoid right wing movement.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        And don't forget that we just had the Bundy trials showing that you can take federal buildings and point guns at federal officials as long as they are part of an unpopular department, so that community has also been itching to try out this new immunity.
        • by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @11:13AM (#59261508) Journal

          Or you can shoot unarmed women and burn children in buildings because they are "scary" people who are defying illegal/immoral government actions.

          (see Waco / Ruby Ridge / Philadelphia and soon Hong Kong)

          I am more scared of unencumbered government power than I am of a few people who are otherwise peaceful. And unlike the government actions you mention where NOBODY was killed, the ones I mentioned caused unneeded deaths, because nobody stood for the victims. And, just for the record, Bundy clan was cleared of any and all wrong doing, it was the US government in the wrong, as declared by the courts.

          There is a difference between peaceful and harmless (the danger presented by the intended victim). You don't want peaceful, you want harmless. I want peaceful, not harmless. The government OUGHT to be scared of the populace, not the other way around.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by jythie ( 914043 )
            Ah yes, the two 'shoot at police and then play victim when the police don't just walk away' cases? Those cases? One of which their own men set the fire rather than go to jail? Lovely.

            As for the bundys.. they got a case of jury nullification, and a judge so worried about a second nullification that they decided a document that contained no factual information but a lot of emotionally charged accusations about 'government employees not liking them!' was a brady violation?

            These people are not peaceful, th
      • by butchersong ( 1222796 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:36AM (#59260990)
        Everything is thinly veiled threats of violence. Violence is the foundation of all government authority and all personal freedom.
    • I strongly oppose our Cheeto-in-Chief, but it's un-American to try to silence the opposition.
      The correct response to bad speech is good speech.

      Indeed. Mr. Trump is a total arsewipe and a no-good, very bad hombre. His tweets are inflammatory too.

      That said- no, twitter shouldn't silence him. If we silenced all the jerks this world would be very quiet. Everyone's a jerk to a degree at times.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bobbied ( 2522392 )

      Remember, this appeals to her voters or she'd not be saying it. I know they don't really understand that they are basically suggesting that we limit political speech and don't understand what the implications of allowing that actually is, but what does it say about these voters, and this politician, that suggesting something like this is seen as effective?

      What's next? Brown shirts and Jack boots? Seriously, why is it we cannot endure political speech, even that which is coarse or rude?

      • Remember, this appeals to her voters or she'd not be saying it. I know they don't really understand that they are basically suggesting that we limit political speech and don't understand what the implications of allowing that actually is,

        Pot meet kettle.

        I don't like Trump, I won't shed a tear when he's gone; that said, it is telling that a lot of the leading candidates of the democrats are equally nutty in the other direction. I think there is a lot of knee-jerking going on here. Yes, Trump is scum and not good for the country or the world; but, that doesn't mean his opposition need to play on his level.

        I long for the day we can have a rational more moderate candidate running again. (and yes, they've never been perfect- but we're just es

        • The shitty candidates we have are a direct result of the shitty way we have set up political parties, primaries, and first past the post voting. Our election system is broken and there is no incentive for the political elites to fix it. The day you have rational and moderate candidates running is the day after our voting system gets replaced with a better one. (which hopefully won't take that civil war to accomplish)

          • That doesn't address the "safe" districts that the correct letter and a rock will win. Why is it that in places that have 1 party rule for decades which fail to govern and the opposition still can't get anyone elected for office? You would think that after many years of failed policies of a party the voters would kick out that party. However, there is a deeper distrust of the "other" than the known failures within the ranks. The rhetoric has been boiled down into a poison that kills any idea of voting for t

    • by gatkinso ( 15975 )

      Disagree in this case.

    • by ShavedOrangutan ( 1930630 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @10:45AM (#59261370)

      I strongly oppose our Cheeto-in-Chief, but it's un-American to try to silence the opposition. The correct response to bad speech is good speech.

      Years ago I spelled President Obama's last name "0bama" and was immediately modded to -1.

      Recently at a business lunch one of my coworkers went on a rant about "The Orange One". Myself and several other people who I knew were conservatives just listened quietly.

      I'm not even sure why I'm posting this. It's just sad.

    • I'm not exaggerating. Go look up the "Oath Keepers". They very much took the Presidents comments as an incitement to violence and have every intention of acting on that incitement.

      I don't like Harris. She's a cop, and a bad cop. She laughed at putting non violent drug offenders in Jail. But she's right (even if this is just a cheap political stunt). Trump is dangerous. He has made threats against a federally protected whistleblower and now this. The responsible thing to do at this point is to remove him
  • This is bait (Score:4, Insightful)

    by poity ( 465672 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:21AM (#59260906)

    The article is bait. The summary is bait. Harris's letter is bait. Trump's tweet is bait.
    How hard will you bite?

    • Re:This is bait (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:26AM (#59260938)

      Depends only on who I may bite. And where.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bobbied ( 2522392 )

      About as hard as you...

      My feelings on this are sadness that the average voter is swayed by these kinds of arguments, that political opponents should be silenced though rules and laws. Where I don't like how coarse the average political discourse has become and how divisive our attitudes are towards each other, I fully recognize my opponents rights to SAY what they want to say any way they want to say it.

      By all means, feel free to judge people on how they say stuff, but at the same time, we MUST as a peop

  • Dumb (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dbrueck ( 1872018 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:23AM (#59260918)

    Unless Harris wants Trump re-elected, this is a dumb move for at least 3 reasons:

    0) Suppressing him by force would only feed into his talking points about corrupt media and corrupt tech being in cahoots with the DNC.

    7) The whistleblower complaint is BS. I'm sorry, but it's true.

    3) Peoples' perception of Trump would improve if he stopped using Twitter. Seriously, not broadcasting his stream of consciousness babble would make him seem way less crazy.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Unless Harris wants Trump re-elected, this is a dumb move for at least 3 reasons:

      0) Suppressing him by force would only feed into his talking points about corrupt media and corrupt tech being in cahoots with the DNC.

      7) The whistleblower complaint is BS. I'm sorry, but it's true.

      3) Peoples' perception of Trump would improve if he stopped using Twitter. Seriously, not broadcasting his stream of consciousness babble would make him seem way less crazy.

      I agree with you on 2½ points. Yes, it would help him; yes his tweets fuel people disliking him.

      I also agree that the whistleblower complaint has no evidence. It hints at wrongdoing (so was not a totally illegitimate complaint), but there has not really been enough evidence to hang a picture with. You can't convinct based on that. (that said, Trump's response to it has been that of a guilty man- so I think he's guilty, but there is no hard evidence)

    • to suppress his open calls to violence. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard.

      Also, Trump's released transcripts show the whistleblower is, if nothing else, not BS. Trump attempted to collude with a foreign power to dig up dirt on a political rival. This is now a matter of fact. He also made a quid pro quote (no, you don't have to be as blunt as everybody says you do to get convicted, and even at that, go read the transcript, it's online and it's painfully obvious he was soliciting a bribe).

      Finall
  • by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:24AM (#59260928) Journal

    "Impeachment would start a civil war" does not follow from "it will cause a civil war-like fracture in this nation from which our country will never heal." Harris is being hyperbolic.

    I'm not sure the guy Trump is quoting is wrong, though. I don't know exactly how we recover from the "intelligence community" or the "deep state" or "permanent bureaucracy" or whatever you want to call it fomenting a coup against an elected president. Why bother with elections? Just let the CIA pick our president for us and be done with it.

    • Even his own sentence makes him look like a narcissistic moron who takes himself way too serious, and considers himself far more important than he possibly could be.

      • by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:57AM (#59261094) Journal

        It's not about Trump. Trump supporters were sick of the entrenched bureaucracy and the permanent political class, so they sent in somebody to (try to?) clean it up. Since before he was inaugurated the entrenched bureaucracy and the permanent political class have been trying to oust the guy. If the bureaucrats get a veto on the electorate, what's the point? There was nothing illegal in the call with Zelensky, so this is not a reason to impeach, it's just an excuse.

        • by atrex ( 4811433 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @10:26AM (#59261260)
          Wanting to clean corruption out of the government is a noble cause. Attempting to do so by voting someone into office who's even more corrupt than the existing establishment isn't going to accomplish that.
        • Yes, but the outcome is a bit like being pissed off at the high insurance rates for your car so you douse it in gasoline and set it on fire.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      I don't know exactly how we recover from the "intelligence community" or the "deep state" or "permanent bureaucracy" or whatever you want to call it fomenting a coup against an elected president.

      So you are ok with government employees ignoring evidence that their superiors are engaged in illegal activity?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      It is kind of hilarious. "They're saying we're going to start a Civil War! Ban them from all platforms! Ignore all our actions that are actively working towards starting a Civil War!"

      The whole "impeachment" thing is ludicrous on its face. Trump released the transcripts. They're more damaging to Biden than him - we now know that Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for the crime of investigating a company his son was working for.

      I am getting really sick and tired of the Democrats and the left complaining a

      • by gmack ( 197796 ) <gmack@innerfiCHEETAHre.net minus cat> on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @10:20AM (#59261238) Homepage Journal

        The whole "impeachment" thing is ludicrous on its face. Trump released the transcripts. They're more damaging to Biden than him - we now know that Biden got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for the crime of investigating a company his son was working for.

        I don't know why this Republican talking point keeps being repeated. Several other countries along with the US wanted that prosecutor gone because he consistently refused to prosecute anyone politically connected. He would "start" investigations and then just never make progress on them. Biden was under orders from his boss (the US president) to encourage Ukraine to replace the prosecutor with someone who would actually do his job and he did. Or are you suggesting that several governments and the president all conspired to protect Hunter Biden?

  • Twist it around (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JeffOwl ( 2858633 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:25AM (#59260934)
    As a government employee and politician, does this count as KH trying to exert influence to deprive DT of his rights? A Federal Appeals Court ruled that DT can't block people who disagree with him, so why would KH be able to demand that he be blocked? While I don't tweet or follow anyone on twitter, the tweets reported in the media were not anything approaching a threat. One could try to argue that KH has influence over the direction of laws governing the operation of Twitter. If one were to take the position that she is implying "either do something or we, Congress, will regulate you so you must do something." But really, why would she want this? If I were DT's opponent I don't think I would want to keep him quite. Let him spout his nonsense, I don't think it is helping him except with those people who are lost causes anyway.
  • And maybe that's what USA needs. Let's put the 2nd amendment nonsense to the test, because I would bet that very few of those cowboy militia loudmouths has the balls to go head to head with the US military But I would love to see them prove me wrong.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Something they have learned over the the last few years is how to pick their targets. They don't go after the military, or regular law enforcement, but they will go after other federal agencies that they know the police will not protect. They also expect the military to join them, and there is such a revolving door between local law enforcement and militias that they can probably count on county level police taking their side.

      What we would probably end up with are a few more 'no go' zones like Josephine
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by TigerPlish ( 174064 )

      And maybe that's what USA needs. Let's put the 2nd amendment nonsense to the test, because I would bet that very few of those cowboy militia loudmouths has the balls to go head to head with the US military But I would love to see them prove me wrong.

      You know, the military and law enforcement may actually align with the 2A folk, and not the screechy Left. There's a sizable movement called "oath keepers" who have made it known they will not enforce confiscations.

      #gunvote
      #willnotcomply

      And fwiw, the seeds of this division, of this coming civil war, were planted by Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. This little nasty thing called The War in Vietnam. That alone broke this country and it's never healed.

      This country wasn't split by Trump, it was

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:34AM (#59260984)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Except that it didn't benefit his family (assuming they were crooks) because the investigation that was shut down was a sham and would be replaced with a real one.
      Maher's point was that it looks swampy for Biden's son to be on a chair with a $600k salary in ukraine. which it does, but not nearly as swampy as DJ or Jared's various schemes.
      So we pick someone else. Liz Warren or Mike Pence both seem like reasonably unswampy choices to me.
      • They replaced Shokin with a guy who had no law degree and had already served time in prison for fraud and forgery. He let Burisma off with a tax fine.

        In fairness, that guy claims his conviction for fraud and forgery was politically motivated. It seems like a staple of Ukrainian politics that everyone is accused of corruption, and everyone claims accusations of corruption against them were a result of corruption.

        Also, Shokin has sworn an affidavit that he was specifically fired for not shutting down the Buri

    • by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      So why didn't Trump have the FBI work on it?

      However you feel about Biden, Trump used his presidential influence to withhold aid until they promised to do an investigation. By your own admission, that's a crime. Trump knows it's a crime, that's why he put it on a separate classified server even though there's no reason for such a call to be classified.

      It's not like it's been a goal of Trump's to crack down on corruption. It'd be one thing if he was investigating many cases of corruption (regardless
  • by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:41AM (#59261018)
    The more you try to suppress Trump, the more it makes him seem like a victim of the establishment and plays into his narrative of being a counter-cultural maverick. While Twitter is free to ban anyone they want, it would be far better to let him stay on the platform, continue having his temper tantrums, and ultimately incriminate himself since he can't keep his mouth closed.
  • by atrex ( 4811433 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @10:15AM (#59261208)
    The problem here is that 45's tweets can be construed as stochastic terrorism.
    https://www.dictionary.com/bro... [dictionary.com]

    But I don't think that a private company like Twitter should be the arbiter of speech in a scenario like this. And it's especially problematic for a member of the government to ask Twitter to ban his account, because that would be a direct violation of the 1st Amendment which protects (most) speech from being censored by the government.

    What needs to happen here I think is more of a judicial process, such as a lawsuit against 45 in which the courts would have to decide whether or not his inflammatory rhetoric crosses the line and endangers the lives of the people. In the same vein as you can't yell fire in a movie theater, you can't urge your followers to commit acts of violence against a person or group. The problem is that 45 has been getting away with exactly this since before he was even elected, and McConnell (along with Obama's weakness) made sure he had an absurd number of judicial vacancies to fill with conservative judges handpicked by some conservative think tank.

    I do believe that Twitter would be within its rights to enforce it's ToS against 45's account as it is a private company and it's not classified as a common carrier/service provider the way a phone company is. It'd be more akin to a newspaper refusing the publish an op-ed written by 45. But, I think it would be tantamount to corporate suicide for it to do so as there would be a large public backlash by about half the country along with a dearth of lawsuits. Or Ajit Pie steps in, says f u, reclassifies social media platforms as common carriers, and has the federal goon squad of regulators step in and take over all their data centers located in the U.S. to ensure compliance.
  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @10:48AM (#59261380)

    Why interrupt your enemy while he is in the middle of making a mistake?

    Or, actually, lots of them.

It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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