Former President Donald Trump is suffering from Twitter withdrawal. With no viable way to get his fix since Twitter cut him off, Trump has turned to a federal judge to plead his case, hoping the legal system will force the company to let him tweet again (preferably in all caps and with a lot of exclamation points).
Trump filed a preliminary injunction on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and asked the judge to make Twitter temporarily reinstate his @realDonaldTrump account while he fights the company’s permanent ban in the courts. The former president argues that he is likely to win his case, where he argues that Twitter’s ban violates the First Amendment, as well as Florida’s deceptive and unfair trade practices law and the state’s new anti-deplatforming law.
In the court filing, which you can find in full over at the Verge, Trump argues that not granting the preliminary injunction — or, not letting him back on social media network — would cause him and his 88 million Twitter followers irreparable harm. This is apparently because his followers are not being allowed to receive his messages or comment on them.
Additionally, the former president claims that his continued absence on Twitter would cause irreparable harm to the Republican party.
“[By] de-platforming the presumptive head and most popular member of the Republican Party, cutting him off from the most effective and direct forms of communication with potential voters, [Twitter] is threatening irreparable damage to the Republican Party’s prospects in the 2022 and 2024 elections,” the court filing states.
But that’s not all. Trump is also apparently harmed because he could lose his donor and merchandising platforms and his ability to endorse local political candidates.
Enter a sad tune being played on the smallest violin in the world. Twitter told Gizmodo it had no comment on the preliminary injunction on Saturday.
Twitter banned Trump on Jan. 8, two days after he riled up a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. At the time, the company said that there was a risk the former president’s tweets could further incite violence. Specifically, it said that two of Trump’s tweets, in which he said the people that voted for him would “not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” and that he would not attend Biden’s inauguration, violated its glorification of violence policy.
Trump filed class action lawsuits against Twitter, Google, and Facebook — which all banned him from their platforms to some extent — in July for violating his First Amendment rights. Since he was no longer welcome on mainstream social media sites, the former president started a blog in May titled, From the Desk of Donald J. Trump. He shut it down a month later, with reports stating that Trump was embarrassed by the blog’s lack of readers.
Although it’s obvious that Trump is itching to tweet again — and rage against the world — Twitter is a nicer place without him. I mean, it can still be a toxic swamp at times, but at least it has one less problem.