Nancy Pelosi statement

Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes: This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike. The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.

Breaking…Just in…

All the platforms that have banned or restricted Trump so far

Sara Fischer, Ashley Gold

Illustration of a chord being unplugged from a Trump-shaped light socket

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Platforms are rapidly removing Donald Trump’s account or accounts affiliated with pro-Trump violence and conspiracies, like QAnon and #StoptheSteal.

Here is a running list:

REDDIT:

WHAT: Reddit has banned the subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump,” a spokesperson confirmed to Axios on Friday.
COMMENT: “Reddit’s site-wide policies prohibit content that promotes hate, or encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence against groups of people or individuals. In accordance with this, we have been proactively reaching out to moderators to remind them of our policies and to offer support or resources as needed,” a spokesperson tells Axios.
CONTEXT: While not an official group or page hosted by the president, it’s one of the company’s largest political communities dedicated to support for President Trump.

TWITCH:

WHAT: Twitch disabled Trump’s channel, citing the move as a “necessary step” to protect its community and “prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence.”
COMMENT: “In light of yesterday’s shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump’s Twitch channel. Given the current extraordinary circumstances and the President’s incendiary rhetoric, we believe this is a necessary step to protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence,” a spokesperson told Axios.
CONTEXT: Twitch was one of the first platforms in June to temporarily ban Trump’s channel for hateful content around the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.

SHOPIFY:

WHAT: Shopify took down two online stores affiliated with Trump — his organization and his campaign’s merchandise sites — for violating its policies on supporting violence.
COMMENT: “Shopify does not tolerate actions that invite violence. Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause. As a result, we have terminated stores affiliated with President Trump.” – a spokesperson told The Financial Times.
CONTEXT: Shopify had until Friday gone the farthest in actually de-platforming Trump, as his stores were permanently removed, not temporarily disabled.

TWITTER:

WHAT: Twitter announced Friday the platform will permanently ban President Trump’s account effective immediately.
COMMENT: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter said in a statement.
CONTEXT: It’s Twitter’s strongest-ever action against the president’s account and comes in response to the “risk of further incitement of violence,” per the social media company.

GOOGLE:

WHAT: Google has pulled Parler, a social media app for conservatives and far-right extremists.
COMMENT: “In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence,” a Google spokesperson said.
CONTEXT: Google’s move immediately suspends Parler, going further than Apple’s earlier decision to remove the app unless it submits a content moderation plan.

YOUTUBE:

WHAT: YouTube is accelerating its enforcement of election misinformation and voter fraud claims against Trump and other channels.
COMMENT: “Due to the extraordinary events that transpired yesterday, and given that the election results have been certified, any channel posting new videos with these false claims in violation of our policies will now receive a strike, a penalty which temporarily restricts uploading or live-streaming. Channels that receive three strikes in the same 90-day period will be permanently removed from YouTube,” Alex Joseph, a YouTube spokesperson, told Axios.
CONTEXT: YouTube is typically slow to take action on bad content and accounts. Its response, while swift, was somewhat benign compared to competitors removing or disabling Trump’s account. YouTube did remove the video Trump posted Wednesday that addressed the Capitol violence without fully condemning it.

FACEBOOK:

WHAT: Facebook banned Donald Trump from posting on his Facebook accounts for at least the next two weeks until the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden is complete.
COMMENT: “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Thursday.
CONTEXT: On Wednesday, Facebook did remove the video Trump posted Wednesday addressing the violence without fully condemning it before taking greater action against Trump on Thursday.

INSTAGRAM:

WHAT: Instagram banned Donald Trump from posting on his Facebook accounts for at least the next two weeks until the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden is complete.
COMMENT: “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Thursday.
CONTEXT: On Wednesday, Instagram’s parent Facebook did remove the video Trump posted addressing the violence without fully condemning it before taking greater action against Trump on Thursday.

SNAPCHAT:

WHAT: Snapchat disabled Trump’s Snapchat account Wednesday because it believes the account promotes and spreads hate and incites violence, a spokesperson said.
COMMENT: “We can confirm that earlier today we locked President Trump’s Snapchat account,” Snap spokesperson Rachel Racusen told Axios.
CONTEXT: Snapchat was one of the first major social platforms to take serious action on Trump’s account for threats to democracy in June when the company said it stopped promoting his account in its “Discover” section, which features professional content and other prominent people.

TIKTOK:

WHAT: TikTok is removing content violations and redirecting hashtags like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty to its community guidelines.
COMMENT: “Hateful behavior and violence have no place on TikTok. Content or accounts that seek to incite, glorify, or promote violence violate our Community Guidelines and will be removed,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
CONTEXT: Other hashtags like #stopthesteal and #QAnon have been redirected since last year.

APPLE:

WHAT: Apple on Friday threatened to remove right-wing-friendly social media app Parler from its App Store if Parler doesn’t lay out a plan to moderate its content.
COMMENT: “We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property,” Apple wrote to Parler in an email obtained by BuzzFeed News. “The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities.”
CONTEXT: Apple is flexing its power to try to get Parler to moderate its content.

DISCORD:

WHAT: Discord says it has banned server The Donald, per journalist Casey Newton.
COMMENT: “While there is no evidence of the server being used to organize the Jan 6 riots, Discord decided to ban the entire server today due to its overt connection to an online forum used to incite violence and plan an armed insurrection in the United States,” per Mother Jones’ Ali Breland.
CONTEXT: The Discord account was connected to the pro-Trump social network TheDonald.Win and the r/theDonald subreddit that was banned Friday.

PINTEREST:

WHAT: Pinterest has been limiting hashtags related to pro-Trump topics such as #StopTheSteal since around the November election, a spokesperson said.
COMMENT: “Pinterest isn’t a place for threats, promotion of violence or hateful content,” a Pinterest spokesperson said. “Our team is continuing to monitor and removing harmful content, including misinformation and conspiracy theories that may incite violence.”
CONTEXT: Trump doesn’t have a Pinterest account, and the platform has tried to stay away from political content, but Pinterest hasn’t been able to squelch it completely.

The bottom line: Trump is quickly losing access to all the platforms where he once was able to spread his message freely, but groups of his supporters will still be able to gather online.

It has not been determined whether this is the Pense fly but it sure is pretty.

Etymology :From Middle English flye, flie, from Old English flȳġe, flēoge (“a fly”), from Proto-Germanic *fleugǭ (“a fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *plewk- (“to fly”). Cognate with Scots flee, Saterland Frisian Fljooge, Dutch vlieg, German Low German Fleeg, German Fliege, Danish flue, Norwegian Bokmål flue, Norwegian Nynorsk fluge, Swedish fluga, Icelandic fluga.

“We saw a weird moment when a fly landed on Pence’s snow-white hair—and the vice president did not react at all. No doubt, it’s a conundrum, what to do in such a situation. If Pence had shooed the fly and the fly had refused to shoo, that would have been bad. So he did nothing. And that doing nothing somehow in one powerful visual moment concentrated everything. It symbolized the whole Pence vice presidency, the determined, willful refusal to acknowledge the most blaring and glaring negative realities. Through all of the scandals and the crimes and the disasters of the past four years, Mike Pence was the man who pretended not to notice. And now there was a fly on his head, and he pretended not to notice that too.”

Excerpted from Ideas Atlantic article by David Frum The Man Who Pretended Not to Notice A fly landed on Mike Pence’s head. And he did nothing. October 8, 2020