Roger Stone is one of President Trump’s most vicious attack dogs, whose bark has always been worse than his bite. But the dog has been muzzled, at least by Twitter. Stone has been suspended from using the social media platform, and according to Buzzfeed it’s a permanent ban.
Stone is a veteran of numerous political campaigns dating back to the 1970s and even has a tattoo of President Nixon on his back. But more recently, he’s been a die-hard supporter of President Trump and a frequent guest on the conspiracy theory show InfoWars. Stone believes that President Trump is being poisoned by his own staff in the White House, among plenty of other weird things.
What did Stone do on Twitter that was so bad? Friday night he went on an unhinged rant against journalists like CNN’s Don Lemon, the New York Times‘ Charles Blow, and ABC News’s Jake Tapper, calling many of them “human excrement.”
One of the tweets sent by Roger Stone that got him banned from the service, possibly for good (Twitter/Wayback Machine)
Stone said that Don Lemon “must be confronted, humiliated, mocked and punished” and that he’s an “ignorant lying covksucker !!!!”, which appears to be a misspelling of “cocksucker.” Stone also called Charles Blow a “fast talking arrogant fake news piece of shit !”
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has archived versions of the Stone tweets:
Tweets by Roger Stone that got him banned from the service, possibly for good (Twitter/Wayback Machine)
But despite reports from Buzzfeed that he’s off the service for good, Stone is seemingly under the impression that his ban is temporary.
“I have been informed that I have been suspended for 3 hours and 12 minutes. While I am uncertain why, sometimes the stark truth offends some people,” Stone told Buzzfeed. “I’ll be baaaaak.”
Gizmodo has reached out to Twitter for independent confirmation that Stone’s ban from the platform is permanent. We’ll update this post when we hear back.
[Buzzfeed]
Update, October 29th, 9:05am: It looks like Roger Stone is now tweeting under the account for his Netflix documentary, Get Me Roger Stone.
OK, you losers. Gonna cocktail and speak to some winners here in Utah. Keep talking your shit. It fuels me. ????☠️
— Get Me Roger Stone (@STONEFLIK) October 28, 2017
Fuck you. https://t.co/KEnYzr3DH2
— Get Me Roger Stone (@STONEFLIK) October 29, 2017
Stone appears to believe that his old account will be back soon:
Thanks man. Main account back up in a few hours. https://t.co/D5Bl47mxI5
— Get Me Roger Stone (@STONEFLIK) October 29, 2017
Twitter has yet to respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment on Roger Stone’s account.
Update, October 29th, 10:00am: Stone has told Politico that he’s thinking about legal action against Twitter.
“This is a strange way to do business and part and parcel of the systematic effort by the tech left to censor and silence conservative voices,” Stone said of his ban in a statement to Politico.
What will Stone sue over? Your guess is as good as anyone’s. Twitter is a private company that doesn’t have to allow anyone on its service.