By Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News
The Washington Post sparked massive confusion Wednesday evening after erroneously reporting that President Trump was banned from tweeting because of a claim he made about the coronavirus.
Both Facebook and Twitter were cracking down on clips that were shared from the president’s interview on “Fox & Friends” earlier in the day, where he continued his push for schools to be reopened in the fall. However, the tech giants removed the clips of him asserting that children are “almost immune” to the virus, citing the claim was “misinformation.”
The Team Trump campaign account had uploaded the video on Twitter, in a post that the president later shared on his personal account.
After Twitter disabled the video, the platform further punished Team Trump by forbidding the account from tweeting until it took down the original post.
However, the Post apparently got its wires crossed in reporting what happened.
FACEBOOK REMOVES TRUMP POST OVER CORONAVIRUS MISINFORMATION RULES; TWITTER ALSO CLAMPS DOWN
“Breaking: Twitter said it will require President Trump to remove a post containing coronavirus misinformation, banning him from tweeting until he does so,” the Post began its report in bold text. “Twitter hid the post and said he will not be able to tweet from his account until he deletes it, although he can appeal the decision.”
The Post then shared a quote from a Twitter spokesperson that appeared to allude to the president instead of his campaign, saying the tweet was “in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation. The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.”
Several Washington Post journalists shared the inaccurate information on Twitter, spreading the report across the platform. They later deleted their tweets.
The paper ultimately issued a correction, writing at the bottom of its report, “Twitter penalized Team Trump, the president’s campaign account. An earlier version of this article said that Twitter penalized President Trump’s account.”
Facebook and Twitter confirmed to Fox News that they took action against the videos uploaded by the Trump campaign.
“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” Facebook spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois told FOX News in a statement.
A Twitter spokesperson similarly told FOX News the tweet was “in violation of the Twitter rules on COVID-19 misinformation” and that the Trump campaign would “be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Courtney Parella told FOX News that President Trump was “stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus.”
“Another day, another display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias against this President, where the rules are only enforced in one direction,” she added. “Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth.”
Fox News’ Lucas Manfredi contributed to this story.
