Twitter suspended former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, after he made calls to behead NIAID director Dr. Anthony Fauci in a YouTube video, which has also been removed.
Social media activist organization Sleeping Giants confirmed that Bannon's handle @WarRoomPandemic (Steve Bannon's War Room) had been suspended after the video began making rounds on social media.
CONFIRMED: Steve Bannon has been suspended by @twitter. https://t.co/YEfuKhmK9f
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) November 5, 2020
In the video of his podcast War Room: Pandemic, Bannon called for Fauci and FBI director Chris Wray to get fired at the start of President Donald Trump's second term should he be re-elected. In the video the former Breitbart executive chairman said he'd "like to go a step farther," but said "the president's a kind hearted man."
Disturbingly, he doesn't hesitate before saying he'd like to "go back to the old times of Tudor England" to implement medieval sentences for Fauci and Wray. "I'd put the heads on pikes, right? I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to Federal Bureaucrats: you either get with the program or you're gone. Time to stop playing games," he said.
Bannon also called for former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell to be made head of the FBI. "Put Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right," he said on the podcast.
In a statement to Newsweek, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to policies on the site that ban language like Bannon's. "The @WarRoomPandemic account has been permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules, specifically our policy on the glorification of violence," the statement said.
The policy prohibits glorification of violence and states: "You may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people."
In light of the video, former Director of Speechwriting to President Barack Obama and Crooked Media co-founder Jon Favreau called for reporters to cease interviewing Bannon "like he's a legitimate public figure."
I’m not going to share the video, but Steve Bannon called for the beheading of Dr. Fauci and FBI Director Chris Wray.
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) November 5, 2020
Political reporters who still interview him and go to him for quotes like he’s a legitimate public figure: maybe stop doing that?
Ironically, Bannon has also called for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to be arrested in an episode of War Room: Pandemic, because it placed warnings over multiple tweets from Trump and labeled them as "disputed and misleading" about the election. "I knew this moment was going to come. When some punk like Jack Dorsey is going to take down and suppress the free speech of the commander-in-chief," he said on the podcast.
As previously reported, Bannon is currently awaiting trial (set for May 2021) after being arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in August. Bannon pleaded not guilty.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
