Twitter flags tweet for ‘glorifying violence’

As anti-police protests escalated overnight in Minneapolis, President Trump tweeted about the protests. For the first time, Twitter marked one of the President’s tweets with a warning for “glorifying violence”. Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi, Alexis Christoforous, and Rick Newman discuss.

Video transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Turning now to Minneapolis where violence escalated overnight with protesters burning a police precinct. They are angry over the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, during an arrest and the slow pace of the investigation into the officers involved.

Also overnight, President Trump tweeted about the protests, demanding the mayor, quote, "get his act together" or the president would send in the National Guard and, quote, "get the job done right."

Now that led Twitter, for the very first time, to mark one of the president's tweets with a warning that it violated the rules for glorifying violence. Our senior columnist Rick Newman joining us now for this one. So, Rick, just moments ago the White House retweeted the second part of the president's tweet, calling the protesters "thugs" and saying, quote, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Have we reached a turning point here?

RICK NEWMAN: Obviously this is not helpful, and it's unsettling. It's reminiscent of the Unite the Right riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when President Trump had, you know, upbeat things to say about the people causing violence down there. This is not helpful.

So if you think about it from Twitter's perspective, they obviously gamed this out when they made the decision to begin labeling President Trump's tweets. So they did not, obviously, anticipate what's going on in Minneapolis, but they probably anticipated situations like this. And what this tells you is they were-- the plan is not just to label those two tweets. They figured they're going to have to do this on an ongoing basis going forward, and they probably anticipated President Trump would try something like the executive order he signed yesterday. So this is going to be a battle between Trump and Twitter for the foreseeable future, I think.

To get back to Minneapolis, I mean, we know what Trump is doing here. This is right out of his playbook. He's playing to his base. He's being a tough guy. You know, he's basically the law-and-order guy. He's saying, you know, this will not stand.

I don't think he's actually going to do anything. I don't think he's going to try to activate or federalize the National Guard because that's not what this is about. This is political. But it's unsettling, and it's disturbing, obviously.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You mentioned that executive order that he signed yesterday. I mean, I have to think that it's going to be challenged in the courts. Do you think it really goes anywhere, or is this just, you know, blustering from the president and meant to be, really, a distraction from the way people feel about how he and his administration are handling the pandemic?

RICK NEWMAN: Disclaimer-- I'm not a legal expert on this, but what Trump's trying to do is change a law with an executive order. There's a law in place that dates back to 1996 which protects the social-media platforms, and Trump is trying to change that. I don't think it'll work, and I don't think it actually matters for Trump.

I think what Trump actually wants, he wants a fight. He wants-- you know, he relishes these battles. He wants to distract everybody from 100,000 people dead from COVID-19 and a terrible recession. And having fights with Twitter, with China, with the media, that is what he-- that's his distracting method. I mean, that's what he does.

So I think Trump is happy to have this fight with Twitter. I think he's happy to have this fight going forward. I don't think he particularly cares what happens in the courts.

And by the way, the executive order directs the FCC to find ways to develop a plan and so forth. It's months and months in the future. So I don't think the FCC is actually going to be doing anything anytime soon. But Trump wants the battle, and he's got it.

BRIAN SOZZI: You know, Rick, is this Twitter perhaps taking the first steps on moderating or labeling tweets for other politicians, those let's say on the far left or far right that tweet controversial stuff?

RICK NEWMAN: Well, Twitter has a strategy here. They just haven't told us what it is, and I don't think they are going to tell us what it is because, I mean, this is the same problem Facebook faces. The reason Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, says we don't think it's our job to police all this content and be the truth police is it's an impossible job. I mean, they've tried to do it with artificial intelligence. You can't. You need people to do it, and there's no way Twitter or Facebook could hire enough people to do this on a real-time basis.

So there has to be some cutoff point, some threshold at which they're going to say we just cannot-- you know, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the number of followers. But they can police Trump. They're going to have to police a few other politicians to show they're being somewhat evenhanded about it. But they can't police everybody. There's no way they can do it.

And Twitter's never-- I don't think they're ever going to tell us what their exact strategy is because they don't want us to know. They just want us-- they just want us to think they're on it after all these years of letting practically anything go out on Twitter. So we'll get some clues probably in coming days.

I'm very interested to find out who else's tweets might be, you know, tagged the way they've tagged Trump's tweets. That will give us some indication of how they plan to execute this, you know, for the foreseeable future.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Hey, Rick, before we let you go, we have to ask about an incident that happened this morning in Minneapolis. Police there arrested a CNN reporter and his crew live while the cameras were rolling. The police have since let those folks go, and the governor, Governor Walz in Minnesota, has apologized publicly. I mean, are things just going from bad to worse for the police force there? What is this about?

RICK NEWMAN: Yes. I mean, it's a horrifying mess. And I think about the incredible irony. I mean, had President Trump been watching that live-- I don't think he watches CNN. I think he only watches Fox. But if President Trump had been watching that live, he would have been cheering-- I mean, CNN, you know, his main nemesis.

But obviously a complete mistake to, you know, arrest a black reporter for CNN and then basically admit they shouldn't have done it. The whole thing aired, by the way. The cameras kept rolling even after the cameraman put the camera on the ground.

It is a complete mess in Minneapolis, and I don't-- I mean, I don't think there's going to be a clean resolution here. I think this is going to be a boiling situation for weeks or months to come.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, we hope peace can return there soon. Rick Newman, thanks. Good to see you.

RICK NEWMAN: Bye, guys.