I got suspended from Twitter for calling Jason Lewis a Republican whore

A brief timeline of Twitter censoring me

Update Below

Yesterday, soon-to-be-former Minnesota Congressman Jason Lewis, wrote this fairly appalling op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

Opinion | Who Lost The House? John McCain

You might remember Jason Lewis from that time he lamented his inability to call women sluts:

A GOP congressman once lamented not being able to call women 'sluts' anymore

So, earlier today, John Harwood tweeted this:

I too found the op-ed galling, so I decided to reply:

He’s a Republican whore.

I can’t link to the actual tweet because my account has been “temporarily limited” because of it.

Twitter has temporarily limited my account for hateful conduct, because I called Jason Lewis a Republican whore.

According to Twitter, I won’t be able to use my account fully until I remove the tweet and then wait twelve hours. I initially clicked the button to start that process, but then decided, “Fuck that! I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Unfortunately, because of that, I can’t even get back to the original warning screen. This is all I see:

Twitter wants me to remove my tweet.

Am one might expect, I’ve appealed the suspension:

You have suspended my account for: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.” I called someone mentioned in a previous tweet a Republican whore. While I acknowledge it wasn’t my classiest tweet ever, I don’t see how it violates Twitter’s rules. Moreover, it was *clearly* a pointed reference to Jason Lewis having lamented his inability to call women sluts.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Update — November 13, 2018 10:00am ET

Twitter has re-enabled my account and left my original tweet where it belongs: On Twitter, visible for all to see.

Here’s what they had to say about it…

We have restored your account, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Twitter takes reports of violations of the Twitter Rules very seriously. After reviewing your account, it looks like we made an error.

So, that’s nice. I’m guessing it helped that I found someone who could expedite my case, but it still points to an incredibly broken system.

Also, Jason Lewis is a Republican whore.