Months before November’s crucial presidential election, giant tech companies are once again pulling out all of the stops to go after President Donald Trump.
According to a troubling report from Politico, two of the largest mobile phone companies in the world have suspended Trump’s 2020 campaign text-messaging program.
The large companies are preventing Trump from being able to communicate with his supporters by text message.
It appears that Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s account is still up.
Politico reported:
A test run of one of Donald Trump’s most important voter-contact programs was abruptly shut down over the July 4 weekend, potentially costing the president millions of dollars in donations and raising alarms about whether the initiative will face roadblocks in the run-up to the election.
Trump’s campaign used the weekend to test-drive its text messaging program, a cornerstone of its small-donor outreach and its voter turnout plan. But after sending out over 1 million patriotic-themed messages, the enterprise was taken offline by anti-spam monitors employed by mobile phone giants.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser who wields vast control over the president’s political apparatus, quickly reached out to Verizon and T-Mobile executives to inquire about initiating communication between the campaign and the companies in hopes of fixing the problem.
It took five days to resolve the shutdown, leading Republicans to worry the same thing could happen this fall as the president urges his supporters to vote when the stakes will be much higher.
The report states that people close to Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile did confirm that the companies have suspended Trump’s ability to send messages to his supporters using peer-to-peer text messaging.
The companies claimed – without proof – that Trump was “spamming” his supporters.
Meanwhile, Biden’s presidential campaign has been left unaffected.
This is a troubling trend.
Last month, one of Trump’s social media accounts was “temporarily suspended” for “hateful conduct.”
The president’s suspended account was on an online video platform called “Twitch,” which is owned by Amazon.
Twitch released a statement saying Trump’s account was suspended for a speech he made in 2015, which was nearly 5 years ago.
According to a spokesperson with Twitch, the company chose to suspend Trump over what they claim was a “hateful” speech he made in 2015.
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, is also being apparently being targetted.
Trump Jr. said Facebook threatened to delete his account on Instagram for going against “community standards.”
Trump Jr. said he was notified on Instagram that the company, which is owned by Facebook, is preparing to delete his account.
“Some of your previous posts didn’t follow our community guidelines. If you post something that goes against our guidelines again, your account may be deleted,” the company said in a statement to Trump Jr.
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