Twitter banned Fox News host Pete Hegseth on Saturday for sharing a screen shot from the account allegedly belonging to Mohammed al-Shamrani, the Saudi man accused of killing three people inside a classroom at the Naval Air Station Pensacola Friday morning.
“I was BANNED from @twitter –because I posted a screen shot of the terrorist from Florida tweeting his Islamist motivations. That’s it, a screen shot of a terrorist in his own words,” Hegseth wrote on Instagram. “If they can ban me, they will ban anyone. We need to fight back. Heck, I posted the terrorist screen shot on this post too, so stay tune for @instagram banning me too.
“Big tech does the bidding of the Left, especially to include anyone who speaks truth about the threat of radical Islam.”
In the post, al-Shamrani allegedly wrote that “America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil,” giving its support of Israel, Guantanamo Bay, “invasion of many countries,” and “crimes not only against Muslims but also humanity,” as examples.
In sharing the screen shot, Hegseth, an Army veteran, wrote: “The coward posted it just hours before his terrorist attack. This is Islamist terror. No reason to ever mince words. Saudi Arabia must be held to account.”
According to the FBI, the shooting is presumed to be “an act of terrorism.”
“We are, as we do in most active-shooter investigations, work with the presumption that this was an act of terrorism,” said Rachel J. Rojas, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville office.
The gunman held a dinner party early last week where he and a few others watched videos of mass shootings, reports The Associated Press.
In a separate post on Instagram, Hegseth shared the appeal he sent to Twitter about his supposedly controversial tweet.
“You blocked me b/c I shared the words – and motivation—of an Islamist terrorist. What are you afraid of?” he asked.
Donald Trump Jr. weighed in on the situation in the comments below, saying it was “unbelievable.”