For the 1st time, Twitter labels Trump tweets with a fact check
Twitter on Tuesday labeled two of President Trump's tweets about mail-in ballots as being misleading, the first time the company has tagged false claims he has made on the platform.
The tweets, which incorrectly declared that mail-in ballots are fraudulent, now have labels that say, "Get the facts about mail-in ballots." The links redirect users to a fact-check page with articles about the matter. A Twitter spokesperson said Trump's tweets "contain potentially misleading information about the voting process and have been labeled to provide additional context."
Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, said in a statement his team "always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters."
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Trump has long faced criticism for spreading falsehoods on Twitter, and over the last few days has used the platform to insult several Democratic lawmakers and spread a conspiracy theory about Lisa Klausutis, a woman who died while working for Joe Scarborough when he was a member of Congress. On Tuesday, Klausutis' widower asked Twitter to delete Trump's tweets, saying he has "struggled to move forward with my life" because of the "barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, innuendo, and conspiracy theories" about his wife's death.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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