Twitter Takes Action Against Donald Trump Jr. Over Hydroxychloroquine Video

A pharmacy tech pours out pills of hydroxychloroquine at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah, on May 20, 2020. George Frey/AFP via Getty Images

Social media giant Twitter temporarily limited the account of one of President Donald Trump’s sons this week as the company continued escalating the policing of what is posted on the platform.

Donald Trump Jr. on Monday evening shared a video of a group of doctors promoting hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, in the treatment of COVID-19.

“This is a much watch!!! So different from the narrative that everyone is running with,” the president’s son wrote.

Twitter determined the post violated its policy on spreading “misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19,” according to an alert Trump Jr. received.

Trump Jr. was not allowed to post any new content for 12 hours or share or like posts. He could also not follow anyone and could only send direct messages to his followers.

Andrew Surabian, a spokesman for Trump Jr., called the move an example of election interference.

“Big Tech is the biggest threat to free expression in America today & they’re continuing to engage in open election interference—full stop,” he said on Twitter.

Twitter said in a statement that Trump Jr. was forced to delete the post about hydroxychloroquine “because it violates our rules (sharing misinformation on COVID-19).”

The tech company said in its alert to Trump Jr. that it requires the removal of content “that may pose a risk to people’s health, including content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information.”

Donald Trump Jr. speaks at President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election event in Orlando, Fla., on June 18, 2019. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

It included links to two pages from the World Health Organization, a United Nations group that’s closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and misled the public during the early days of the CCP virus outbreak.

Facebook and YouTube joined Twitter in policing a new video that showed members of a group called “America’s Frontline Doctors” speaking in support of hydroxychloroquine.

“For the past few months, after taking care of over 350 patients, we’ve not lost one. Not a diabetic, not somebody with high blood pressure, not somebody who asthma, not an old person. We’ve not lost one patient,” said Dr. Stella Immanuel, a primary care doctor at Rehoboth Medical Center in Houston, promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine with zinc and an antibiotic called azithromycin.

While doctors across the country prescribed hydroxychloroquine this year to combat COVID-19, some research groups have since halted tests on the drug because they said it had no effect on the new disease.

Still, the science is far from settled. Indian researchers found the drug helps prevent infection from the CCP virus and doctors in Michigan said the drug lowered the death rate for COVID-19 patients. Studies around the world on the proper dosage, and the efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19 are ongoing.

Twitter’s action came just one day before the CEOs of four major tech companies, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, will face questioning from lawmakers, and amid a larger effort to adjust rules that currently shield social media companies from liability because of their claims that they’re not publishers.

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.