By Katanga Johnson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Twitter Inc on Sunday said it permanently banned the personal account of Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for tweets that repeatedly violated the social media’s misinformation policy on COVID-19.
The congresswoman from Georgia is the first member of Congress to ever have a Twitter account permanently banned.
Twitter has previously issued https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-temporarily-blocks-us-republican-greene-covid-19-posts-2021-07-20 a short-term suspension for Greene’s account, @mtgreenee, for tweets about COVID that it called “misleading”. At least two other Republican members of the House have received temporary suspensions on Twitter — Jim Banks and Barry Moore.
“Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,” Greene said in a statement on messaging app Telegram, adding that social media platforms “can’t stop the truth from being spread far and wide. Big Tech can’t stop the truth. Communist Democrats can’t stop the truth.”
The official account of the congresswoman, @ReptMTG, remains active on Twitter and has 390,000 followers, slightly less than the 465,000 on her banned personal account.
Greene has come under fire before for remarks on the pandemic. Last June she apologized https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congresswoman-marjorie-taylor-greene-apologizes-comparing-covid-19-masks-2021-06-14 after comparing COVID-19 mask requirements and vaccinations to the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews.
Last January, Twitter temporarily locked Greene’s account after she sparred with a state election official over voter fraud allegations.
Twitter and several other social media platforms banned former President Donald Trump from their services after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in a deadly riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
(Reporting Katanga Johnson in Washington; Additional reporting by Sneha Bhowmik in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
