![]() ![]() Other times, offices of senior Trump administration officials would send emails seeking to remove tweets that they believed to be “hate speech” or death threats aimed at their principals. Oftentimes, requests would demand Twitter stop “shadowbanning” certain conservative accounts, or that the company reinstate banned or suspended right-wing personas. ![]() But during both the Trump and Biden presidencies, these types of moderation requests or demands were routinely sent to Twitter by the staff of influential GOP lawmakers - ones with names like Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik. The voluminous requests often came from high-ranking political appointees working in different departments, offices, and agencies in the Trump administration. In interviews with former Twitter personnel, onetime Trump administration officials, and other people familiar with the matter, each source recalled what could be described as a “hotline,” “tipline,” or large Twitter “database” of moderation and removal requests that was frequently pinged by the offices of powerful Democrats and Republicans alike. “It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done ,” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. But former Trump administration officials and Twitter employees tell Rolling Stone that the White House’s Teigen tweet demand was hardly an isolated incident: The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to - the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online. ![]()
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