On CNN Tuesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin laid into Twitter for their refusal to take down tweets from President Donald Trump falsely accusing MSNBC host and former Congressman Joe Scarborough of murdering a staffer — despite pleas from the staffer’s family to make him stop.
“Twitter says it’s deeply sorry about the pain, that they’re working on how to figure out how to handle situations like this,” said anchor Brianna Keilar. “I wonder if there’s any legal recourse that this man has.”
“I think frankly it’s unlikely that he has any able to sue Twitter or even the president, but you know, Twitter is a private company,” said Toobin. “They have rules. Like Greyhound buses have rules. You can’t stay on a Greyhound bus if you break the rules. President Trump has broken the rules of Twitter over and over again, and Twitter has done nothing but put out statements of corporate gibberish like the one it did today.”
“They either have rules that — I went and reviewed them today. Targeted harassment,” said Toobin. “This is precisely targeted harassment at Joe Scarborough, and certainly the memory of Mrs. Klausutis. Twitter should follow its own rules and take these tweets down … Twitter is just afraid of both the president and right-wing trolls who follow him. That’s why they’re not doing what they should be doing, which is taking this tweet down.”