Twitter Suspends Conspiracy Account After Trump Retweet

Twitter has suspended a conspiracy-peddling account amplified by President Donald Trump, The Daily Beast has confirmed. Trump retweeted the account, which used the display name “LYNN THOMAS” and the handle @LYNNTHO06607841, on Tuesday afternoon. By early Tuesday evening, the account had been suspended. 

A source familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast that the account was suspended for violating the Twitter rule that bars users from using multiple accounts to artificially amplify or disrupt conversations. 

The Tweet that Trump retweeted include a bold graphic saying, “DEMOCRATS ARE THE TRUE ENEMIES OF AMERICA!” Its emoji-laden text read, “DEMOCRATS ARE THE ONLY ONES INTERFERING IN OUR ELECTIONS. WHY DO YOU THINK THEY SO STRONGLY OPPOSE VOTER ID?”

Before the suspension, the account enthusiastically pushed Qanon conspiracy memes and bizarre theories about prominent Democrats murdering children to harvest their pineal glands. One such meme targeted Bill and Hillary Clinton, claiming they “torture and sacrifice children” to get at “a drug that can only be found inside the human skull.” That was posted last Thursday—five days before the current president graced the account with a retweet. 

Twitter has long wrestled with how to enforce its rules in the Trump era. Trump spent the weekend lambasting Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is African American, and his congressional district, which is 53 percent black. The tweets–including a missive saying “no human being would want to live there”–drew widespread condemnation as racist and horrible. But though Twitter recently announced it will affix warning labels to tweets from public figures that violate its rules, it didn’t use that option on Trump’s tweets about Cummings. 

The president has long shown a penchant for retweeting eye-popping material. In December 2017, he retweeted a picture of a blood-spattered CNN logo. Earlier that year, he retweeted a picture of a train killing a person labeled “CNN.” He has also increasingly taken to retweeting dozens of accounts, as he did in March and again in May of this year.