[guest post by Dana]

Twitter rolled out the ban hammer today:

Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account on Friday, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.”

The president’s account was initially banned for 12 hours on Jan. 6 due to “severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy,” after he used the platform to tweet condemnation against Vice President Mike Pence as his supporters stormed the Capitol.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the company said in a tweet…

“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action,” Twitter said in a blog post. “Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.”

Trump wasn’t alone:

Twitter on Friday removed the accounts of Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell and other high-profile supporters of President Donald Trump who promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The permanent bans are among the highest profile that the company has instituted as part of its efforts to crack down on misinformation and calls for violence.

Flynn and Powell both met with Trump at the White House in recent weeks as part of efforts to overturn the presidential election results. They are also high-profile figures in the QAnon community, and Flynn even took an “oath” to the conspiracy theory last year.

“The accounts have been suspended in line with our policy on Coordinated Harmful Activity,” a Twitter spokesperson told NBC News. “We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm, and given the renewed potential for violence surrounding this type of behavior in the coming days, we will permanently suspend accounts that are solely dedicated to sharing QAnon content.”

When a private company opts to cut ties with individuals because they have stoked the flames of hate, incited violence by their un-American behavior and harmed the Republic as a result, and, when they have violated the rules that the private company has established, they have not been canceled. Rather, they have received their just desserts as decided by the private company. And for the record, it is not an “authoritarian act,” nor a “dystopian decision,” and it’s certainly not a “disturbingly Orwellian move” either. A private company made this decision, not a totalitarian government, people.

Trump has also been blocked “indefinitely” from posting on Facebook and Instagram, per CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Along with Trump and his peeps getting the boot, Sen. Josh Hawley was informed by publishing house Simon & Schuster that his book will no longer be published by them:

Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that it would no longer publish a planned book by Sen. Josh Hawley, one of the Republican lawmakers who led objections to Congress certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

“After witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Simon & Schuster has decided to cancel publication of Senator Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book,” the company said in a statement.

“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Simon & Schuster added. “As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.”

Hawley, as you can imagine, was rather unhappy with the decision, and appeared unable to see how his abhorrent behavior was the reason for the decision:

My statement on the woke mob at @simonschuster pic.twitter.com/pDxtZvz5J0

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 7, 2021

As JVW snarked in an email yesterday: Serves him right for not publishing with Regnery, like any good conservative would.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Save it, you simpering fools who have become little more than oozing pustules on the ass of American politics. Your belated pangs of conscience mean absolutely nothing to me:

Republican senators say they feel a sense of growing regret over not standing up to President Trump sooner — a day after a violent mob ransacked the Capitol building in one of the darkest and most humiliating days in U.S. history.

One Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss his conversations with GOP colleagues acknowledged GOP lawmakers should have served as a stronger check on the president over the past four years.

“We should have done more to push back, both against his rhetoric and some of the things he did legislatively,” said the lawmaker. “The mistake we made is that we always thought he was going to get better. We thought that once he got the nomination and then once he got a Cabinet, he was going to get better, he was going to be more presidential.”

Many Republicans are shell-shocked over the horrific scenes at the Capitol and seem to be trying to come to grips with their role in the disaster.

…

The GOP senator said he and his colleagues expected Trump would eventually accept the results of the election after courts ruled against his legal team’s challenges, which were resoundingly dismissed by Republican- and Democratic-appointed judges alike.

But Trump never did, and most Republicans — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — held back any sharp criticism.

This was largely because Republicans calculated they needed Trump to get out the vote in two runoff races to decide the Senate majority in Georgia.

How deluded were they if they believed that Trump would get better or become more presidential? Especially four years into the job. Why were they unable to see what I was able to see and what you were able to see, even as far back as his first campaign? Did they really believe he would “grow into the job” and thus America would be the better for his presidency? Well, maybe at first. But four years into it? No, of course not. I believe that the vast majority of the Republicans in Congress made a calculated decision to support the man with his hands on the levers of power rather than holding him accountable when they knew it was the right thing to do because by doing so, their self-interests and political futures were secured. That they chose not to hold Trump accountable, especially post-election, is inexcusable. He has always been the deluded, self-consumed narcissist we see today. But they chose to look the other way. Of course, they had more on the line and more risk involved in calling him out than did I, but that’s the job they signed up for. And they swore an allegiance to support and defend the Constitution, not the man who would be king.

What’s ironic too, is that these same Republicans are just now wringing their hands about the damage done to the Republican Party, both today and in the long-term:

But now there’s a sense among a growing number of GOP lawmakers that Trump may have inflicted long-term damage on their party, an anxiety heightened by the debacle of a pro-Trump mob storming and occupying the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday as Congress was meeting to finalize Biden’s election as the nation’s 46th president.

“There’s more concern about the long-term damage to the party than losing two Senate seats in Georgia,” the GOP senator said.

A second Republican senator who requested anonymity said Trump had inflicted serious damage on his party.

“Every time you think the president has done everything he could possibly do to fuck things up, then he comes out with a tweet, like the election was invalid and the one in Georgia would be invalid,” said the lawmaker, referring to Trump’s tweets Friday declaring the runoff elections to be “illegal and invalid.”

The feelings of remorse are only now being expressed privately after Republican senators spent much of the past four years dodging questions about Trump’s controversial tweets, statements and decisions.

America has seen the truth of this statement hit just a bit too close to home this week: all tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. I’m sure there will be lots of naval-gazing done by those who were in a position to hold Trump accountable and call him out for his reprehensible and un-American behavior. But as they consider their own complicity during his tenure, it is incumbent on Americans to remember the names of the eight Republican senators and 139 representatives who continued to look the other way, even after an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Constitutional conservatives, libertarians, classical liberals—let’s build something new together. Let’s build a party we can be proud of—one that honors our American traditions, upholds the Rule of Law, and protects individual rights—one focused on persuading, not hating.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) January 7, 2021

–Dana