Twitter locked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's account on Wednesday for posting a video of someone threatening the senator outside his home. The clip apparently violated the platform's terms of service. But on Friday Twitter reversed its decision and freed his campaign's account. It'll allow the video to stay online, but it has to be accompanied by a “sensitive media interstitial.”
After multiple appeals from affected users and Leader McConnell’s team confirming their intent to highlight the threats for public discussion, we have reviewed this case more closely.
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) August 9, 2019
The McConnell campaign posted about its "victory" on its now visible Twitter page.
Victory!!!
— Team Mitch (@Team_Mitch) August 9, 2019
Thank you to EVERYONE for helping #FreeMitch.
Help us keep winning: https://t.co/u56exRnfKv pic.twitter.com/7Y28QdkrKv
But, in an accompanying statement on Friday, the campaign suggested it was too little, too late.
"We are glad Twitter has reversed their decision to lock our Team Mitch account. It is still deeply concerning that Twitter would ban us from posting a video of threats made against us but allow Liberal Hollywood celebrities to post exactly what we did without suffering the same penalty.
"It shouldn't have taken an avalanche of outrage from across the country to stop Silicon Valley from launching an effort to silence conservatives like the Majority Leader of the United States Senate in the first place. We look forward to learning more about what steps Twitter will take to ensure that this egregious suppression campaign never happens again."
In the controversial video on McConnell's campaign page, you can hear a protester outside the senator's house sharing her desire to see someone "stab the motherf**ker in the heart." By the way, this all took place while McConnell was trying to recover from a nasty spill he took on Sunday and broke his shoulder.
That callous remark was far from the only one.
Senator Mitch McConnell fractured his shoulder in a fall at home. There are countless responses like these left by Democrats & Socialists on tweets about his accident.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) August 6, 2019
We’re living through a dangerous period in US politics where extremists see opposition as worthy of your death. pic.twitter.com/KUm0kLR7PU
Yet it was McConnell's team who was the punished party. Conservatives and Republicans, like Donald Trump Jr., spoke out about the hypocrisy of Twitter blocking his account, but not that of say, Hamas.