Twitter responds after Obama-era official complains Trump’s Iran comments were an ‘outrageous abuse’

Chris White, DCNF

Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey gestures while interacting with students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi on November 12, 2018. - Dorsey hosted a town hall meeting with university students on his visit to the Indian capital New Delhi. (Photo by Prakash SINGH / AFP) (Photo credit should read PRAKASH SINGH/AFP via Getty Images) — (PRAKASH SINGH/AFP via Getty Images)

Twitter said President Donald Trump’s comments threatening future strikes against Iran do not violate its policies as an Obama-era official said they are abusive.

“The Tweets are not in violation of the Twitter Rules,” Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough said Monday in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. She was referring to January tweets from Trump in which he warned of future actions if Iran responded to his Jan. 2 airstrike against Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

“We have … targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!” Trump wrote on Jan. 4.

Katie Jacobs Stanton, a former Obama-era official and Twitter executive, retweeted a tweet Sunday from Trump that suggested his tweets are warnings to Iran that the U.S. will “strike back.”

“When I worked at Twitter, we thought it was a good idea for world leaders to have a platform to speak directly to constituents,” she wrote in a Sunday tweet. “The use case of announcing and/or threatening war is an outrageous abuse of the platform and most importantly, the Constitution.”

When I worked at Twitter, we thought it was a good idea for world leaders to have a platform to speak directly to constituents.

The use case of announcing and/or threatening war is an outrageous abuse of the platform and most importantly, the Constitution. https://t.co/o9KuYMQFCg

— Katie Jacobs Stanton (@KatieS) January 6, 2020

Stanton worked at Twitter between 2010 and 2016. She was also appointed to a special advisory position at the U.S. State Department in 2010 during former President Barack Obama’s first term.

Another former Twitter employee weighed in on the tweets. “At Twitter, we used to dream about the possibilities for governing and diplomacy through the service. This is not what we had in mind,” Jim Prosser, a former Twitter spokesman, said in a tweet Sunday. Twitter often wrestles with how to handle Trump’s tweets.

Twitter announced in June that the company will start labeling and down ranking politicians’ most vitriolic tweets. The label applies to all verified political candidates and officials with more than 100,000 followers, Twitter noted in a blog post. Users who want to view flagged content must click on a screen that says Twitter’s rules against abusive behavior apply to the tweet.

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