President Donald Trump may be facing a permanent ban from Twitter, but that isn't stopping him from finding a way around the ban. Just after the House of Representatives voted to impeach him for a historic second time, the president made his return to the social media platform with a video shared to the White House Twitter account urging no further violence following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
In the more-than-five-minute-long video, which was also shared on YouTube, the lame-duck president denounced the Capitol attack as an incursion that "struck at the very heart of our republic," adding, "I unequivocally condemned the violence that we saw last week." Speaking from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, he said "violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement," stating that the "Making America great again has always been about defending the rule of law, supporting the men and women of law enforcement and upholding our nation's most sacred traditions and values." Mob violence, he said, "goes against everything I believe in, and everything our movement stands for."
Although the president vowed that those involved in the Capitol attack "will be brought to justice," he did not mention the article of impeachment brought against him, accusing him of inciting an insurrection. He did, however, discuss "the unprecedented assaults on free speech," which he said, "are wrong and they are dangerous." He called on Americans to "listen to one another, not to silence one another" and "choose by our actions to rise above the rancor and find common ground and shared purpose… to overcome the passions of the moment, and join together as one American people."
On Jan. 8, just two days after the attack on the Capitol, Twitter announced it had "permanently suspended" the president's personal account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence." Several other accounts were banned as the president attempted to circumvent the ban, with the company telling The Verge it would attempt to limit the use of even government accounts, such as the official White House account, if Trump tried to use them to evade his ban. In response to concerns regarding the Thursday video, Twitter told NBC reporter Dylan Byers that the clip does not "demonstrably engage in ban evasion or share content that otherwise violates the Twitter Rules."