Trump Begs in New Court Filing: Please Let Me Tweet

Donald Trump still isn’t over losing his Twitter account in the wake of the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. The former president filed a request for a preliminary injunction against the social media company late Friday, asking a judge to reinstate his account temporarily while he sues the social network.

Trump lost his tweeting privileges — and the ability to post on a number of other social media networks — for inciting violence on the day of the deadly insurrection. Twitter, in a statement on January 8th, said that they “permanently suspended [Trump’s] account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” At the time Trump lost his Twitter account, he had amassed some 88 million followers.

In Trump’s filing, submitted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the former president’s attorneys claim that members of Congress “coerced” Twitter to boot him from the platform. Twitter “exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate,” the filing said, according to Bloomberg.

The filing also argues, according to CNBC, that Twitter allowed the Taliban to tweet about their military victories in Afghanistan but targeted Trump during his presidency by labeling his tweets as containing “misleading information” or claiming they broke the platform’s guidelines prohibiting “glorifying violence.” During his presidency, Trump lashed out at Twitter and other networks with a constitutionally dubious executive order proclaiming he would “fight online censorship by tech corporations, including social media platforms.”

As of publication, the social media platform has not issued a public response to the former president’s request to make Twitter awful again. Twitter isn’t the only tech company Trump has targeted for a suit. In July, he filed a lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook Inc and Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, along with the companies’ chief executives. The suit claims that the platforms unlawfully suppress conservative views.