Rep. Greene's Twitter account is banned for COVID claims

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (AP) -- Twitter announced Sunday that it had removed the personal account of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right representative of Texas. This was in response to multiple violations of COVID-19's misinformation policy. It is the latest strike against Taylor Greene who has been accused of embracing conspiracy theories and being a "cancer" to the GOP. The House then removed Taylor Greene from all committees.

Rep. Greene's Twitter account is banned for COVID claims

Under the "strike," system Twitter introduced in March that uses artificial intelligence to detect misleading posts about the coronavirus and suspends accounts of Georgia Republicans. A 12-hour account lock is granted for two or three strikes. A weeklong suspension is triggered by four strikes. A person can be permanently banned from Twitter if they commit five or more violations.

Greene attacked Twitter's decision to suspend her Telegram account in a statement. After tweeting statistics from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (a government database that contains unverified raw data), her account was suspended.

Greene stated that "Twitter" is an enemy of America and cannot handle the truth. "It's okay, I'll show America that we don't need them. It's time for us to defeat our enemies."

Twitter previously suspended Greene’s personal account for periods of 12 hours up to a whole week. Greene's @mtgreenee personal account is affected, but not her @RepMTG official account.

Inflammatory commentary has been a frequent source of controversy for the first-term lawmaker.

She has expressed support on social media for racist views and unfounded QAnon conspiracy theories about Donald Trump, such as the liar that the 2020 election was stolen, and for violence against Democratic politicians including Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif).

Senator Republican leader Mitch McConnell called McConnell's embrace of conspiracy theories and "loony lying" a "cancer in the Republican Party". He also fired her from two committee assignments: the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Budget Committee.

Twitter suspended Greene from Twitter for one week in July after President Joe Biden asked tech companies to take stronger actions against false vaccine claims that "kill people". Twitter also claimed it had removed thousands of tweets about COVID-19 and challenged millions of accounts around the world.

According to the Internet Archive, one of Greene's last tweets included a Saturday reference to "extremely high levels of covid vaccine death," according tweets.

Greene boasted last week on Twitter that she had spoken to Trump by phone. She claimed that she had been granted permission by Trump to clarify his position on vaccine mandates, but he encourages people who are interested to receive the booster and vaccine. On Dec. 19, Trump claimed he had received the COVID-19 booster shot.

Dr. Anthony Fauci (the White House's top medical advisor) stated that the U.S. is seeing almost a "vertical rise" in COVID-19-related cases. The average number of cases per day now stands at 400,000, with hospitalizations increasing. A surge in COVID-19 omicron cases has been observed across the country.

NEXT NEWS